Olga Timofeeva - Words in Dictionaries and History [2011][A]

Book Description
Bringing together fifteen articles by scholars in Europe and North America, this collection aims to represent and advance studies in historical lexis. It highlights the significance of the understanding of dictionary-making and language-making as important socio-cultural phenomena. With its general focus on England and English, the book investigates the reception and development of historical and modern English vocabulary and culture in different periods, social and professional strata, geographical varieties of English, and other national cultures. The volume is based on individual (meta)lexicographical, etymological, lexicosemantic and corpus studies, representing two large areas of research: the first part focuses on the history of dictionaries, analysing them in diachrony from the first professional dictionaries of the Baroque period via Enlightenment and Romanticism to exploring the possibilities of the new online lexicographical publications; and the second part looks at the interfaces between etymology, semantic development and word-formation on the one hand, and changes in society and culture on the other.

Reviews
“The volume is edited to a high standard. As David Vancil remarks in the preface to this collection, Rod McConchie is well-known not only for his published work, but for his insightful comments and questions at conferences. In keeping with this spirit of academic dialogue, the articles not only add to our knowledge of the history of dictionaries and the history of words, but prompt further questions and avenues of research. This Festschrift is a tribute to its celebrant while also standing on its own as a useful addition to the field.”
— Kate Wild, in International Journal of Lexicography, Volume 24, Number 4, December 2011. Pages 487-492

“Words in Dictionaries and History is a wide-ranging collection of highly insightful and informative papers on occasionally very surprising but without exception interesting topics related to historical lexis.”— L. Fens-de Zeeuw, on Linguist List 2011

“The first responsibility of Words in Dictionaries and History is to honor R. W. McConchie, which it does by the uniform excellence of the articles included in it, the way those articles respond to McConchie's varied interests, and their frequent citation of McConchie's works, which merely underscores the significance of his work in the history of English and English lexicography. The same excellence appeals to its fortunate readers, and I hope the next festschrift I pick up is half as good as this one.”— Michael Adams, Indiana University, Bloomington, in Kernerman Dictionary News, July 2012. Volume 20, pages 34-38

“Reading this varied, wide-ranging festschrift teaches the reviewer many things, some fundamental, others specific lexical points. The whole is well indexed, and the references at the end of each paper include the publisher’s name for each book, a welcome detail [...].”— E.G. Stanley, Pembroke College, Oxford, in Notes and Queries, Vol. 59:4 (2012)