A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (MART: The Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching) [Paperback]

J.R. Clark Hall (Author), Herbert T. Merritt (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0802065481 | ISBN-13: 978-0802065483 | Publication Date: April 1, 1984 | Edition: 4th

This classic dictionary deals carefully and exhaustively with all the words which occur in Anglo-Saxon poetry and prose. Variant dialectic forms are given, together with variant forms found in the same dialect. Purely poetic words and words not common in prose are indicated, and references are given to the passages in which they occur. First published in 1894, this is a reprint of the fourth edition (Cambridge University Press, 1960).

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division; 4th edition (April 1, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802065481
• ISBN-13: 978-0802065483
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #878,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Affordable, and adequate for general use, March 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (MART: The Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching) (Paperback)

Students, usually a penurious lot, are in a pickle when it comes to dictionaries of ancient languages: a good one is essential, but often expensive. This paperback reprint offers a happy solution, a reasonably-priced dictionary of first resort. This is where to go when all you need is the meaning of a word. Words, their definitions, a few notes--it's really just a glorified glossary. Normalized spellings are used, but variants are included and cross-referenced. The notes consist mainly of abbreviated references to original texts and more advanced works, including the OED (or the NED as it was called when this dictionary first saw print). Latin borrowings are marked, but cognates in other Germanic languages are not supplied--save a few exceptions that occur maybe once every seven pages for no reason I can discern.

A sample entry might give you a better sense of how this dictionary is organized.

bearm I. (a) m. lap, bosom, breast, Lk : middle, inside: (+)possession. II. emotion, excitement? PPs 118. III.=beorma

[Lk = Gospel of Luke; (+) = poetical; PPs = Paris Psalter.]

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some Clarification on the Thorn/Eth Issue, February 27, 2006

By 

Laukr "reader-person" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (MART: The Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching) (Paperback)

I haven't anything to add to these reviews, except to offer some clarification on this dictionary's exclusive use of "eth" (ð) and never "thorn" (þ). Several reviewers have complained about this as a defect in the dictionary, so it is worth pointing out that in Old English the eth and thorn characters are used interchangeably. The phonetic quality of each is determined not by the character used, but by its placement in the word. For instance, at the beginning or end of a word, it is voiceless, but it is voiced when falling between other voiced sounds. (Here the other reviewers were, perhaps, confusing things with Old Norse, in which eth does always = voiced "th," and thorn = its voiceless counterpart.)

Now, one may say that the dictionary editors might have been more charitable by standardizing the eth and thorn characters, one each for voiced and voiceless "th" (as some editors do) to aid in pronunciation, and that would be a fair statement; on the other hand, it would be equally fair to assert that students of (or even dabblers in) Old English are expected to be able to tell the difference without the editors' help. In any case, it is highly erroneous to say (as one reviewer did) that this dictionary "screws up" the usage of thorn and eth.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I won't give it 5 stars because..., August 7, 2002

By 

C. Imbert (France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (MART: The Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching) (Paperback)

... this is more a lexicon than a dictionary. But it is the only affordable and valuable one on the market, behind the great (but very expensive) Bosworth and Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dict. Thus, sometimes you might not find the word you're looking for. So be smarter than the lexicon: search another word derived from the same root, suppress the prefixes, change the cases, think of the infinitive of the verbs, and you may finally obtain your translation of the word.
But let us be honest: this book is great, and affordable for most of us.
A classic ?