Zahiriddin muhammad bobur nomidagi andijon davlat universiteti ingliz tili grammatikasi kafedrasi

Activity 1. Read the fol lowing ca reful ly. Notice the structu re, time seq u ence, dates, verb forms and prepositions used.
A History of English Dictionaries
The beginnings of English dictionaries date from 1604 when the first 'hard-word dictionary' was pub lished . It contained fewer than 3000 difficult words, which were explained by easier ones. An important principle was introduced: that of listing words in alphabetica l order ( A-Z).
The first major dictionary was the Universal Etymological English Dictionary by Nathaniel Bailey, which was published in 17 21. ( Etymology is the study of the origin and history of words and their meanings.) This one volume contained about 40,000 words.
One of the great landmarks in the history of dictionaries was the publication in 1755 of A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. He built on the work of Bailey and illustrated the use of words by including about 100,000 quotations from well-known authors from the 16th century onwards. Perhaps his most famous definition is that of 'oats': 'A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.'
I n America, in 1828, Noah Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language. Its two volumes consisted of about 70, 000 words and included scientific terms. Webster included American pronunciation and
spelling, for example 'color' for 'colour' and 'center' for 'centre'.
Probably the most important development in the history of dictionaries was the production of The Oxford English Dictionary. Dr James Murray started to edit the enormous work in 1 879, and the first part was published in 1884: A - ANT, in 352 pages! It took another 44 years to complete the dictionary, in 125 parts. The final work was published in 1928 in 12 volumes covering 15,487 pages which included Samuel Johnson nearly 500,000 words.


Activity 2. Read through the passage below, then write an appropriate word in each of the spaces.