Guest lecture: "Bi/multilingual dictionaries in the history of English lexicography: the case of English-German dictionaries" on May 5, 2026
As part of her lecture on “Words and Dictionaries through Time” this spring semester, Dr. Annina Seiler is delighted to invite you to a guest lecture by Prof. Nicola McLelland from the University of Nottingham. Prof. McLelland’s lecture, entitled “Bi/multilingual dictionaries in the history of English lexicography: the case of English-German dictionaries” will take place in room KOL-F-109 (https://www.plaene.uzh.ch/KOL) on Tuesday 5 May 2026, from 14.00-15.45. For more details on the lecture, see the abstract below. Everyone is welcome!
This lecture will make the case for including bilingual dictionaries in language histories, taking English-German / German-English dictionaries as a case study, which were – until the end of the eighteenth century, all.) This lecture will present four cases studies of English-German dictionaries from the 18th and 19th centuries that are interesting for different reasons:
i. the very first English German dictionary (Ludwig 1706), the work of a German compiler with German users in mind. (English-speaking learners of German were a much smaller market and were not considered until the very end of the eighteenth century)
ii. the English-German dictionary of Johann Christoph Adelung (1783-1796), who is much better known for his pioneering dictionaries of the German language, considered the basis of modern German lexicography. I shall try to convince you that his English-German dictionary rewards a closer look too.
iii. Fluegel’s English-German dictionary (Fluegel 1827), the first English-German dictionary to try to take into account Americanisms in English.
iv. a19th-century German’s attempt, in his “Supplementary lexicon” (Hoppe 1871), to explain English cultural specificities to German readers of English literature – including, for example, the sport of cricket.
Reading: McLelland, N. (2024). Christian Ludwig (1660–1728) and the beginnings of German/English lexicography. Oxford German Studies, 53(4), 391–415. https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2024.2313897
References
Primary sources
Adelung, Johann Christoph. 1783 (A-J), 1796 (K-Z). Neues grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der englischen Sprache für die Deutschen vornemlich aus dem größern englischen Werke des Hr. Samuel Johnson nach dessen vierten Ausgabe gezogen und mit vielen Wörtern, Bedeutungen und Beyspielenvermehrt. Leipzig: im Schwickertschen Verlage. v1 (1783 A-J) and v2 (1796 K-Z)
Fluegel, Johann Gottfried. 1827. A complete Dictionary of the English and German Languages, containing all the words in general use. Vollständiges Wörterbuch der englischen und deutschen Sprache. Leipzig: Liebeskind.
Hoppe, Alexander. 1871. Englisch-deutsches Supplement-Lexikon: als Ergänzung zu allen bis jetzt erschienenen Englisch-deutschen Wörterbüchern […] durchweg nach englischen Quellen bearbeitet von A. Hoppe. Berlin: Langenscheidt.
Ludwig, Christian. 1706. A dictionary English, German, and French: containing not only the English words in their alphabethical order, together with their several significations, but also their proper accent, phrases, figurative speeches, idioms & proverbs, composed from the best new English dictionaries. Leipzig: bey Thomas Fritschen.
Further secondary reading
Hausmann, Franz Josef, and Margaret Cop. 1985. Short History of English-German Lexicography.' In Symposium on Lexicography II. Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Lexicography,edited by Karl Hyldgaard-Jensen and Arne Zettersten, 183-97. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
McLelland, Nicola. 2024a. 'Adelung’s English-German dictionary (1783, 1796): its achievements and its relationship to the dictionaries of Samuel Johnson and Johannes Ebers', Historiographia Linguistica, 50: 62-93, https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.00131.mcl
McLelland, Nicola. 2024b. 'Christian Ludwig (1660-1728) and the beginnings of German/English lexicography', Oxford German Studies, 53: DOI 10.1080/00787191.2024.2313897.
McLelland, Nicola. 2024c. 'English/German bilingual lexicography in the nineteenth century', Angermion, 17 1-39 https://doi.org/10.1515/anger-2024-0001.
McLelland, Nicola. 2025. 'English/German bilingual dictionaries in the eighteenth century: an overview ', Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, 46: 61-101. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2025.a963325.