The Lexicons of Early Modern English

Abstract

The Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME), an in-progress database of early dictionaries in England from about 1475 to 1700, builds on the EMEDD, now freely available on the Web. LEME is larger in scope, but the reasons for undertaking it remain the same. Language commentary written by Early Modern English lexicographers usefully supplements the OED, as an examination of selected word-entries in John Florio's first Italian-English lexicon (1598) shows. Editorial annotation of works of the period also can glean much from LEME sources. By comparing traditional editorial glosses to Shakespeare's Cymbeline, II.i.15-34, to what early lexicons supply, we can see how unmodern his language was, and how it is (in minutiae) still misunderstood.