Bailey’s Competitive Publishing: A Comparative Analysis of Bailey’s 1721 and 1727 Universal Etymological English Dictionaries
Additional Funding Sources
The project described was supported by the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program through the U.S. Department of Education under Award No. P217A170169.
Abstract
Throughout the eighteenth century, there were two major dictionaries that were produced and rose to popularity. One of these which is well known today is Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). However, a less well-known infamous lexicographer’s work enjoyed popularity during that time. That author was Nathan Bailey with multiple versions of his Universal Etymological English Dictionary. The first version was released before Johnson’s dictionary (1721), and boasted of a larger word list. However, only six years after producing the first volume of his dictionary, Bailey released a second volume under nearly the same title. This volume holds fewer words than the first, though the definitions are significantly longer in many cases. Some of these are entirely new headwords that did not make it into the first volume, and others are expanded definitions of words present in the first volume. Many of them read more as encyclopedic entries rather than lexicographical ones. In an effort to parse out possible reasons behind Bailey’s release of this thought-provoking second volume, I have examined the whole of the B section of both volumes and separated the entries and words into categories based on definition type and word subject, allowing for an unbiased comparison of the two volumes.
Bailey’s Competitive Publishing: A Comparative Analysis of Bailey’s 1721 and 1727 Universal Etymological English Dictionaries
Throughout the eighteenth century, there were two major dictionaries that were produced and rose to popularity. One of these which is well known today is Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). However, a less well-known infamous lexicographer’s work enjoyed popularity during that time. That author was Nathan Bailey with multiple versions of his Universal Etymological English Dictionary. The first version was released before Johnson’s dictionary (1721), and boasted of a larger word list. However, only six years after producing the first volume of his dictionary, Bailey released a second volume under nearly the same title. This volume holds fewer words than the first, though the definitions are significantly longer in many cases. Some of these are entirely new headwords that did not make it into the first volume, and others are expanded definitions of words present in the first volume. Many of them read more as encyclopedic entries rather than lexicographical ones. In an effort to parse out possible reasons behind Bailey’s release of this thought-provoking second volume, I have examined the whole of the B section of both volumes and separated the entries and words into categories based on definition type and word subject, allowing for an unbiased comparison of the two volumes.