A history of the English Language

170.
Dictionaries of Hard Words.
As early as 1582 Mulcaster had written: “It were a thing verie praiseworthie in my 
opinion, and no lesse profitable than praiseworthie, if som one well learned and as 
laborious a man, wold gather all the words which we use in our English tung, whether 
naturall or incorporate, out of all professions, as well learned as not, into one dictionarie, 
and besides the right writing, which is incident to the alphabete, wold open unto us 
therein both their naturall force and their proper use.” This statement shows another of 
the many ways in which Richard Mulcaster was in advance of his time. It was not until 
nearly 150 years later, when Nathaniel Bailey published his 
Universal Etymological 
English Dictionary
(1721), that anyone attempted to list all the words in the language. 
The earliest dictionaries were those explaining the words in Latin or some other foreign 
language, and the earliest English dictionaries were dictionaries of hard words. The first 
of these was a little book of 120 pages by Robert Cawdrey, called 
A Table Alphabeticall 
of Hard Words
(1604), explaining some 3,000 terms.
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It was followed in 1616 by John 
Bullokar’s 
English Expositor
and in 1623 by the 
English Dictionarie
of Henry Cockeram, 
both of which passed through numerous editions. Blount’s 
Glossographia
(1656), 
Edward Philipps’ 
New World of Words
(1658), and other later compilations continued to 
treat only the more difftcult words until the time of Bailey, whose book held the field 
until the appearance of Dr. Johnson’s. An interesting feature of Cockeram’ s work and 
the later editions of Bullokar was a section “serving for the translation of ordinary 
English words into the more scholastick, or those derived from other languages.” By 
means of this supplement a person might write in ordinary English and then, by making a 
few judicious substitutions, convey a fine impression of learning. The development of 
dictionaries was a consequence of the extensive additions that had been made to the 
language and in turn helped to facilitate their adoption into general use.