Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 239 views

    The Spectator - The New Cambridge Greek Lexicon

    Uploaded by

    Wen-Ti Liao
    The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is a new dictionary that provides a major improvement over previous dictionaries like Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. It organizes over 37,000 Greek words based on their core meanings in English rather than through a historico-linguistic approach. All examples are translated into English for clarity. This makes it much easier for students and scholars to use compared to previous dictionaries. The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is considered a triumphant achievement that will be greatly beneficial to the study of classical Greek.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Spectator - The New Cambridge Greek Lexicon

    Uploaded by

    Wen-Ti Liao
    239 views3 pages
    The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is a new dictionary that provides a major improvement over previous dictionaries like Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. It organizes over 37,000 Greek words based on their core meanings in English rather than through a historico-linguistic approach. All examples are translated into English for clarity. This makes it much easier for students and scholars to use compared to previous dictionaries. The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is considered a triumphant achievement that will be greatly beneficial to the study of classical Greek.

    Original Description:

    The Spectator - The Cambridge Greek Lexicon

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is a new dictionary that provides a major improvement over previous dictionaries like Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. It organizes over 37,000 Greek words based on their core meanings in English rather than through a historico-linguistic approach. All examples are translated into English for clarity. This makes it much easier for students and scholars to use compared to previous dictionaries. The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is considered a triumphant achievement that will be greatly beneficial to the study of classical Greek.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    239 views3 pages

    The Spectator - The New Cambridge Greek Lexicon

    Uploaded by

    Wen-Ti Liao
    The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is a new dictionary that provides a major improvement over previous dictionaries like Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. It organizes over 37,000 Greek words based on their core meanings in English rather than through a historico-linguistic approach. All examples are translated into English for clarity. This makes it much easier for students and scholars to use compared to previous dictionaries. The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is considered a triumphant achievement that will be greatly beneficial to the study of classical Greek.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is an eye-

    opener for classical scholars


    This pioneering dictionary is a triumphant achievement — authoritative,
    precise and a real pleasure to use compared with its predecessors

    From The Spectator magazine issue: 7 August 2021

    Professor James Diggle with the Cambridge Greek Lexicon.


    Text settings
    CommentsShare

    The Cambridge Greek Lexicon

    edited by J. Diggle, B.L. Fraser, P. James, O.B. Simkin, A.A. Thomson and SJ.
    Westripp

    CUP, two volumes, pp. 1529, £64.99

    The great Latinist D.R. Shackleton Bailey was once said to have been pinned into a
    corner at a party and ordered to reveal what he actually did. ‘I just look things up all
    day,’ came the tetchy reply.

    That will ring a loud bell with those who learned ancient Greek or Latin at school,
    especially when it came to looking up the meaning of a word in LSJ, Oxford’s big
    Greek-English dictionary, or rather lexicon (Greek lexikos, ‘of or for words’). It was
    named after the initials of its two original editors (Henry) Liddell and (Robert) Scott,
    and a later revising editor (Henry Stuart) Jones, and was so full of Greek that it took
    about a day to find the meaning you were actually looking for.

    Leaning heavily on Franz Passow’s Greek-German dictionary, LSJ was published in


    1843 at a price equivalent to £235. Following a tradition going back to Henri
    Estienne’s massive, ground-breaking Greek Thesaurus of 1572, its actual purpose was
    to give a historico-linguistic account of the Greek language. Hence its vast size and
    scope (some called it ‘Great Scott’). The latest (ninth) edition (1940) consists of more
    than 2,000 A4 pages of small-type, close-set Greek and English, weighs 10lbs and
    features more than 116,000 entries gleaned from countless literary and other sources.
    A supplement adds 320 pages of corrections and additions, revealing that the
    Greekshad a word for ‘to be changed into a cow’. Ino, Ino. It also includes the very
    earliest Greek from the economic records of Linear B, taking the reader back to 1450
    BC.

    Picture now the beginner turning to LSJ  for the first time, each entry forested with
    illustrative quotations in Greek, each one fully referenced but very few translated, and
    the English meanings peeping shyly out of the impenetrable Greek thickets in no
    discernibly logical sequence. What on earth was the neophyte to make of this
    historico-linguistic monster? To their credit, Liddell and Scott realised the problem.
    So at the same time they published a heavily abridged and simplified Little Liddell,
    and in 1882 a Middle Liddell, covering rather more authors.

    Enter John Chadwick, as in the Ventris and Chadwick who deciphered Linear B. For a
    long time he had felt dissatisfied with LSJ, and in 1997 he published proposals for a
    lexicon on quite different principles, on which he suggested basing a revised Middle
    Liddell. When it emerged that it was unrevisable, and that only a wholly new lexicon
    of Middle Liddell  scope and purpose would do, Oxford abandoned the project and
    Cambridge pounced. Now we have the result.

    While inevitably drawing on the resources and evidence of LSJ, CGL is nevertheless
    revolutionary. The compilers, led by one of the world’s outstanding Greek scholars,
    Professor James Diggle, have followed Chadwick’s lead in abandoning the traditional
    historico-linguistic approach in favour of categorisation by meaning alone. Revisiting
    each chosen word (c. 37,000 in all) diachronically, they identify its ‘root’ meaning in
    English, make that the first entry and then crisply and clearly categorise related
    meanings in a logically comprehensible sequence, with all illustrative quotations
    translated into English, not left in Greek. On almost every page, the only Greek (bar
    irregular forms, etc) is the dictionary entry. Authors from Homer to Plutarch (c. AD
    120) are covered, as are the Gospels and Acts.

    All dictionaries are translations, and word-for-word translations are a tricky business.
    As Dr Christopher Stray recently pointed out, LSJ got into trouble from those
    denouncing its handling of biblical Greek (one critic called it the ‘whorish mother of
    all harlot lexicons’, claiming it corrupted Cecil Rhodes’s faith). Others disapproved of
    its use of Anglo-Saxon English; but that still did not stop LSJ masking obscenities
    with sens(u) obsc(eno) (91 times) or leaving them in Gibbon’s ‘obscurity of a learned
    language’.

    CGL certainly escapes criticism on these fronts. For example, while LSJ offers ‘ease


    oneself’ for khezô, the Latin coire, inire for bîneô, and ‘wench’ (what?)
    for  laikazô, CGL offers respectively ‘shit’, ‘fuck’ and ‘(of a man) perform fellatio,
    suck cocks’. But Greek is rich in words of lamentation, and even CGL cannot avoid
    the ‘woe is/ah me’ syndrome from time to time.

    Naturally, its intense focus on meaning and absence of fully referenced sources may
    well beetle scholarly eyebrows. But there is hope that further financial backing can be
    found to develop a sophisticated online version to update and expand where
    necessary.

    This pioneering lexicon is a triumphant intellectual and educational achievement, its


    design and content making it a real pleasure to use. Its authority, clarity and precision
    will be a boon and blessing for students, and an eye-opener for classical scholars and
    lexicographers too. L, S and J will surely be looking favourably on
    this CGL revolution from their everlasting places of honour in the asphodel fields.

    WRITTEN BYPeter Jones


    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-cambridge-greek-lexicon-is-an-eye-opener-
    for-classical-scholars

    You might also like