ir Thomas
Elyot, Knight, the first work, so far as I know, which took to itself
in English what was destined to be the famous name of DICTIONARY, in
mediaeval Latin, _Dictionarius liber_, or _Dictionarium_, literally a
repertory of _dictiones_, a word originally meaning 'sayings,' but
already by the later Latin grammarians used in the sense of _verba_ or
_vocabula_ 'words.' The early vocabularies and dictionaries had many
names, often quaint and striking; thus one of _c_1420 is entitled the
_Nominale_, or Name-book; mention has already been made of the
_Medulla Grammatices_, or Marrow of Grammar, the _Ortus Vocabulorum_,
or Garden of Words, the _Promptorium Parvulorum_, and the _Catholicon
Anglicum_; later we find the _Manipulus Vocabulorum_, or Handful of
Vocables, the _Alvearie_ or Beehive, the _Abecedarium_, the
_Bibliotheca_, or Library, the _Thesaurus_, or Treasury of Words--what
Old English times would have called the _Word-hord_, the _World of
Words_, the _Table Alphabetical_, the _English Expositor_, the _Ductor
in Linguas_, or Guide to the Tongues, the _Glossographia_, the _New
World of Words_, the _Etymologicum_, the _Gazophylacium_; and it would
have been impossible to predict in the year 1538, when Sir Thomas
Elyot published his 'Dictionary,' that this name would supplant all
the others, and even take the place of the older and better-descended
word _Vocabulary_; much less that _Dictionary_ should become so much a
name to conjure with, as to be applied to works which are not
word-books at all, but reference-books on all manner of subjects, as
Chronology, Geography, Music, Commerce, Manufactures, Chemistry, or
National Biography, arranged in Alphabetical or 'Dictionary order.'
The very phrase, 'Dictionary order,' would in the first half of the
sixteenth century have been unmeaning, for all dictionaries were not
yet alphabetical. There is indeed no other connexion between a
dictionary and alphabetical order, than that of a balance of
convenience. Experience has shown that though an alphabetical order
makes the matter of a dictionary very disjointed, scattering the
terminology of a particular art, science, or subject, all over the
book, and even when related words come together, often putting the
unimportant derivative in front of the important primitive word, it is
yet that by which a word or heading can be found, with least trouble
and exercise of thought. But this experience has been only gradually
acquired;