The book was by today's standards more a synonymicon than a true dictionary—it offered very brief (often one-word) glosses, rather than true definitions. So abbreuiat was `to shorten, or make short' and an abettor was simply `a counsellor'. Moreover, the words with which Cawdrey had chosen to enlighten England's `Gentlewomen and unskillful persons' were the improbably contrived portmanteau words—the so-called inkhorn terms—with which the loftiest members of London high society liked to pepper their salon conversations in the hope of sounding more erudite and cultured than perhaps they actually were. He lists for their assistance words like bubulcitate, sacerdotall, archgrammacian, and attemptate—all of them extravagances now mercifully gone the way of the doublet, the ruff, and the periwig. Just as his readers would likely have no interest in serge, black bread, or objects carved in deal, so Robert Cawdrey has no interest in the commonplace words of the time—and so his Table Alphabeticall, while its publication marked a pivotal moment in lexical history, was in fact a work of very limited utility, and barely comparable with what would come in its wake.
But for all its shortcomings, Cawdrey's was the first monolingual English dictionary ever made, and in its wake—because of the need expressed by Mulcaster and Bullokar and Webster—came a huge number of others, 8 as though a floodgate had suddenly been cranked open. In the early days of the century most of these, too, dealt with difficult words, as though their easier kinsmen somehow did not require explication. One of these, however, Thomas Blount's famous Glossographia of 1656, does begin to get to grips with the fantastic complexity of ordinary English, as the author made clear in his `Note to the Reader':
Nay, to that pass we are now arrived, that in London many of the Tradesmen have new Dialects; The Cook asks you what Dishes you will have in your Bill of Fare; whether Ollas, Bisques, Hachies, Omelets, Bouillons, Grilliades, Ioncades, Fricasses; with a Haugoust, Ragoust etc. The Vintner will furnish you with Montefiascone, Alicante, Vornaccia, Ribolla, Tent, etc. Others with Sherbert, Agro di Cedro, Coffa, Chocolate, etc. The Taylor is ready to make you a Rochet, Mandillion, Gippon, Justacor, Capouch, Roqueton or a Cloke of Drap de Bery, etc. The Shoomaker will make you Boots, Whole Chase, demi-Chase, or Bottines, etc. The Haberdasher is ready to furnish you with a Vigone, Codeck or Castor, etc. The Seamstress with a Crabbet, Toylet etc. By this new World of Words, I found we were slipt into that condition which Seneca complains of in his lifetime; when men's minds begin to endure themselves to dislike, whatever is usual is disdained: They affect novelty in speech, they recal oreworn and uncouth words; And some there are that think it is a grace, if their speech hover, in thereby hold the hearer in suspence, etc.
The beginning of it alclass="underline" the first true English-only dictionary, published `for the benefit of Ladies…or other unskilfull persons'—by the Coventry schoolmaster Robert Cawdrey, in 1604.
Perhaps today we are uncertain how to eat Ioncades (a junket) or have forgotten that a Mandillion is a kind of overcoat and a Castor is a hat fashioned from beaver fur. But these were not hard words, of the kind Cawdrey sought to explain—these were the jargon of trade and fine living, and in publishing them Blount tells us somewhat more about the language of the day than did most of his counterparts. Moreover, he offers citations for some words—and he makes an observation that, we now know, underpins the entire story of the book that this account celebrates: he realizes that he is indeed a lexicographer, and that the task of such a specialist is one that `would find no end, since our English tongue daily changes habit'.
For that reason alone, Thomas Blount, barrister of Worcestershire, Catholic to the core, wealthy and leisured and a linguist of considerable talent, deserves to be remembered: not as the father of modern dictionaries maybe, but as the lexicographer who saw the light—who realized the ceaseless magnitude of the task (if it were ever to be undertaken) of gathering together all of the thousands upon thousands of ever-changing words with which generations of invaders and wanderers had littered and seasoned the peculiarly English means of saying things. To remark that English lexicography is like herding cats, as the saying has it, is only the half of it.
But the word-herders then began in earnest, however difficult the task. After Blount there was Milton's nephew John Phillips, who put out another 11,000-item `long hard word' dictionary two years later. He had countless fights with Blount (mainly over allegations of plagiarism, to which all dictionary editors— who are bound to use earlier dictionaries to make sure they've left nothing out of their own—are prey); and in 1706 (ten years after his death) his work was expanded into a 38,000-word monster, a volume which counts as one of the first true lexicons to break out of merely listing inkhorn words for the benefit of society dandies. John Kersey, who edited the new sixth edition of Phillips, called it The New World of Words: or a Universal English Dictionary containing—and after listing, once again, the inclusion of hard words from a variety of languages, added, splendidly, that these would be found together with a brief explication of all terms that relate to the Arts and Sciences, either Liberal or Mechanical, viz.
Grammar, Rhetorick, Logic, Theology, Law, Metaphysicks, Ethicks, Natural Philosophy, Law, Natural History, Physick, Surgery, Anatomy, Chymistry, Pharmacy, Botanicks, Arithmetick, Geometry, Astronomy, Astrology, Cosmography, Hydrography, Navigation, Architecture, Fortification, Dialling, Surveying, Gauging, Opticks, Catoptricks, Dioptricks, Perspective, Musick, Mechanicks, Statics, Chiromancy, Physiognomy, Heraldry, Merchandise, Maritime and Military Affairs, Agriculture, Gardening, Handicrafts, Jewelling, Painting, Carving, Engraving, Confectionery, Cookery, Horsemanship, Hawking, Hunting, Fowling, Fishing etc.
The mould had now been broken. Over the coming halfcentury there were to be dozens of new dictionaries published, as a craze for consumable lexicography swept across England like a hurricane. The names of those who made them have long since vanished from all worlds save those of collectors— names like Nathaniel Bailey and Francis Gouldman, B. N. Defoe, James Manlove, J. Sparrow, Thomas Dyche, Francis Junius, and Edward Cocker. Their creations grew steadily larger and larger as the size of the language became ever more fully realized; and by the middle of the eighteenth century, with dictionaries containing 50,000 or 60,000 words thundering from presses up and down the country, it was abundantly clear that the craft of the lexicographers who made them was no longer an idle occupation of the leisured dilettante, but an entirely professional calling.
The phrase `according to Cocker', which was heard around this time, was invested with a meaning which flatters the profession to this day. It means reliably or correctly or according to established rules. It was to be the dictionary-makers' equivalent of the more widely known games players' phrase, `according to Hoyle'. It made lexicography a respected way of life.