Polyglot dictionaries

Abstract Chapter 5 gives an account of the polyglot, or multilingual, dictionaries of the sixteenth century which included English. In all of these, English-language equivalents were added to existing dictionaries in continental European traditions. They might have subject-ordered macrostructure, like the Sex linguarum dictionarius of 1537, or alphabetical macrostructure, like the Colloques ou dialogues avec un dictionaire en six langues of 1576; they might include dialogues or phrasebook material. Their headwords might be Latin, and one of them, the Nomenclator of Hadrianus Junius, included some interesting post-classical Latin. A polyglot tradition based on the Dictionarium of Calepino matched English words with equivalents in ten other ancient and modern languages.