John Lane’s Verball
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John Considine
Abstract
In the liminary materials to an anonymously published narrative poem, The First Booke of the Preservation of King Henry the vij (1599–1600), the author announced a dictionary project, promising – four years before the publication of Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall – that he would “set forth a Verball, or littel Dictionarie, with a Prosodia requisite for Poetry.” After a brief account of the context in which this promise was made, I will discuss the author’s identity, which can be narrowed down with some certainty, and established with a high degree of probability, from internal evidence, the likeliest candidate being one John Lane, a member of a well-connected Staffordshire gentry family. I will also discuss the likely form of the dictionary which Lane planned, and suggest why he never completed it.
Abstract
In the liminary materials to an anonymously published narrative poem, The First Booke of the Preservation of King Henry the vij (1599–1600), the author announced a dictionary project, promising – four years before the publication of Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall – that he would “set forth a Verball, or littel Dictionarie, with a Prosodia requisite for Poetry.” After a brief account of the context in which this promise was made, I will discuss the author’s identity, which can be narrowed down with some certainty, and established with a high degree of probability, from internal evidence, the likeliest candidate being one John Lane, a member of a well-connected Staffordshire gentry family. I will also discuss the likely form of the dictionary which Lane planned, and suggest why he never completed it.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Tabula gratulatoria vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction xiii
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Part I. History of dictionaries
- The Flores of Ouide (1513) 3
- “Halles Lanfranke” and its most excellent and learned expositive table 17
- John Lane’s Verball 41
- The linking of lemma to gloss in Elyot’s Dictionary (1538) 55
- Music amidst the tumult 79
- Chaos and old night 91
- Online dictionaries of English slang 109
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Part II. Word history and cultural history
- Old English etymologies in Christfrid Ganander’s Nytt Finskt Lexicon (1787) 131
- The origin of the word yeoman 153
- Early East India Company merchants and a rare word for sex 169
- From denominal to deverbal 193
- A gente Anglorum appellatur 219
- William Lambarde and Thomas Milles in search of the golden past 233
- Contempt 249
- A lexical skirmish 269
- Index of subjects 287
- Index of personal names 291
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Tabula gratulatoria vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction xiii
-
Part I. History of dictionaries
- The Flores of Ouide (1513) 3
- “Halles Lanfranke” and its most excellent and learned expositive table 17
- John Lane’s Verball 41
- The linking of lemma to gloss in Elyot’s Dictionary (1538) 55
- Music amidst the tumult 79
- Chaos and old night 91
- Online dictionaries of English slang 109
-
Part II. Word history and cultural history
- Old English etymologies in Christfrid Ganander’s Nytt Finskt Lexicon (1787) 131
- The origin of the word yeoman 153
- Early East India Company merchants and a rare word for sex 169
- From denominal to deverbal 193
- A gente Anglorum appellatur 219
- William Lambarde and Thomas Milles in search of the golden past 233
- Contempt 249
- A lexical skirmish 269
- Index of subjects 287
- Index of personal names 291
