Folk defining in monolingual English learners’ dictionaries

Part I. The Ancient World 
Part I serves the general purpose of introducing the earliest documented roots of modern 
lexicography as found in ancient civilisations. When thinking in terms of modern lexicography, 
it may be easy to lose sight of the perspective that lexicography emerged in the ancient 
civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, Greece, and Rome. Many of the works 
generated back then may lack ingredients which are today deemed essential to lexicographic 
compilations—not to mention that many of these pieces have most likely not survived in a 
literary context which tended to channel its efforts into copying only those works that were 
considered ‘canonical.’ In comparison with, say, Homer’s 
Odyssey
manuscripts, ancient 
wordlists may have been perceived as mere language pastimes—in spite of their potential 
implications in understanding both the emergence of lexicography itself and its contribution to 
lexicography as we currently know it. 
In the leading article, Niek Veldhuis underscores the non-banal idea that the 
Mesopotamian lexicography ‘extends from the very beginning of writing (around 3200 BC).’ 
It is mentioned that, at the time, there appeared to be two basic forms of lexicography—a 
primary one, comprised of ‘sign lists’ and ‘word lists,’ which coexisted with a more 
sophisticated one (‘school exercises’), typically used for educational purposes. Another 
possible classification mentioned by Veldhuis touches on the ‘dimensionality’ of early 
Mesopotamian lexicography, with one-dimensional occurrences (i.e. lists of words devoid of 
any possible explanation) as opposed to two-dimensional compilations (e.g. lists of words in 
already-extinct Sumerian accompanied by Akkadian translations and/or conceptual 
explanations). An entire section is then dedicated to the ‘invention’ of Mesopotamian 

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lexicography, which—initially being of an inventorial nature—is loosely dated sometime 
between 3200 and 2000 BC. A large number of these lexical items tend to pose multiple 
challenges when it comes to unearthing their precise semantic underpinnings (e.g. 
NAMEŠDA
is 
used to designate a ‘ruler,’ yet this term may not have been a hypernym proper, but instead it 
was probably used to convey a more specific meaning). Veldhuis then identifies a period of 
‘innovation,’ stretching approximately from 2000 to 1000 BC. During this period, a general 
trend is found in that wordlists become two-dimensional and more comprehensive, as they grew 
more suitable for the pursuit of educational purposes. In the first millennium BC, 
Mesopotamian lexicography undergoes a ‘consolidation’ stage. Overall, Mesopotamian 
wordlists are especially relevant since they ‘provide an entry [for Assyriologists] into the 
vocabulary of Sumerian, a linguistic isolate’ (p. 35). 
Frank Feder delves into how lexicography developed in Ancient and Coptic Egypt since 
the times of the so-called Old Kingdom (c. 2657 BC). A tendency similar to that of 
Mesopotamia is found in that early lexical classifications were largely ‘thematic compilations’ 
(p. 37), which in the hieroglyphic script relied on so-called 
classifiers
(i.e. signs deprived of a 
phonetic value). At a later stage, in the context of the Middle Kingdom (c. 2119-1794 BC) and 
New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC), most lexical categorizations were devoted to the onomastic 
genre, which, in Feder’s own words, “must have been [composed of] standard manuals to 
conserve and transmit traditional knowledge about everything in the Egyptians’ world, 
including their language” (p. 39). When Egypt falls under foreign rule (i.e. Persian, Greek, 
Roman, Byzantine, and Arabian, respectively), lexicography comes under the spotlight, along 
with an increasing demand for professionals well-versed in the languages spoken in both Egypt 
and the colonists’ original territories. This context renders lexicography even more complex, 
the words listed frequently being accompanied by translations, transcriptions, or both. 
In the chapter entitled ‘Ancient China,’ Françoise Bottéro explains how lexicography in 
ancient China likely arose from the need for better explaining and understanding texts which 
were deemed too complex to be understood by the average readership. Prior to the emergence 
of dictionaries proper, early wordlists are found which include the