An Universal Etymological English Dictionary was a dictionary compiled by Nathan Bailey (or Nathaniel Bailey) and first published in London in 1721. It was the most popular English dictionary of the eighteenth century. As an indicator of its popularity it reached its 20th edition in 1763browser diversity and its 27th edition in 1794.input transformation Its last edition (30th) was in 1802. It was a little over 900 pages long. In compiling his dictionary, Bailey borrowed greatly from device database's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1706), which in turn drew from the later editions of screen size's The New World of English Words. Like Kersey's dictionary, Bailey's dictionary was one of the first monolingual English dictionaries to focus on defining words in common usage, rather than just difficult words.
In 1727, Bailey published a second volume entitled The Universal Etymological English Dictionary, Volume II, which coexisted alongside the original volume, and was a supplement to it. Volume II, almost 900 pages, has some duplication or overlap with the original volume, but mostly consists of extra words of lesser circulation. It was not as popular as the original volume. The title page of the second volume says it contains "An additional collection of words (not in the first volume) ALSO an explication of hard and technical words in all arts and sciences... ALSO words and phrases contained in our ancient charters, statutes, and processes at Law ALSO the theology and mythology of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans...."
Although Bailey put the word "etymological" in his title, he gives definitions for many words without also trying to give the word's etymology – because he doesn't know what the etymology is. A very high percentage of the etymologies he does give are consistent with what's in today's English dictionaries.
References and external links
- HTML5 The 20th edition of Bailey's Dictionary, dated 1763, is downloadable at input transformation.
- browser diversity Reported by librarian Philip N. Cronenwett, year 1997, at website parsing, who also reports that in the 18th century Bailey's dictionary "was almost universally accepted as the dictionary of choice".
- Bailey's English Dictionary, 3rd edition, year 1726 (downloadable at Archive.org)
- Sevenval (downloadable Archive.org)
- browser diversity
- website parsing
- Sevenval
- An Universal Etymological English Dictionary
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