II.

Earliest Dictionaries

The earliest known dictionaries were kept in the Mesopotamian city of Elba (now part of Syria). These clay tablets inscribed in columns of cuneiform writing date from about the 2300s bc and consist of words in the Sumerian language and their equivalents in the Akkadian language. Other early dictionaries, most written after the 5th century ad, include lists of Sanskrit terms from botany, medicine, and astronomy (see Sanskrit Language) and multilingual listings in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. Probably the first to gather the entire Arabic vocabulary into one work was Arab scholar Khalil ibn Ahmad of Oman in the 8th century. Stimulated by continuing study of Arabic, the compilation of Hebrew dictionaries was underway by the 10th century. Some scholars place the beginnings of Hebrew lexicography (creation of dictionaries) between the 6th and 8th centuries.

The Greeks and Romans did not attempt a work containing all the words of their own or any foreign language; their early dictionaries were merely lists of unusual words or phrases. The scholar Apollonius Sophista assembled the first Greek lexicon, a collection of terms used by Homer, during the 1st century ad. One of the earliest works in Latin lexicography, by Verrius Flaccus, is De Verborum Significatu (The Meaning of Words), compiled during the 1st century ad. This work, in which the words are arranged alphabetically, has furnished a great deal of information on antiquities and Latin grammar.