Jamieson's Dictionary of Scots: The Story of the First Historical Dictionary of the Scots Language
ISBN: 9780191741920
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Linguistics;

This is the first full account of the making of John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. The dictionary was published in two volumes in 1808, with a two-volume Supplement following in 1825. Lists of Scots words had been compiled before, but Jamieson's was the first complete dictionary of the language. It was a landmark in the development of historical lexicography and was an inspiration for later lexicographers, including Sir James Murray, founding editor of the OED. Susan Rennie's account of Jamieson's work and the methods he developed interweaves biography, lexicography, and linguistic, social, and book history to present a rounded account of the man, his work, and his times. It is the first study to draw on Jamieson's correspondence and the surviving manuscript materials for the Dictionary and Supplement to reveal Jamieson's working methods and the important contributions made by Sir Walter Scott and others to his work.


Susan Rennie is a lexicographer and author. A former Senior Editor with Scottish Language Dictionaries, she edited and managed the online Dictionary of the Scots Language at the University of Dundee in 2001-4. Her books include The Oxford English Thesaurus for Schools, and several Scots-language books for children, including the award-winning Animal ABC: A Scots Alphabet.

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