An Universal Etymological English Dictionary

An Universal Etymological English Dictionary was a dictionary compiled by Nathan Bailey (or Nathaniel Bailey) and first published in London in 1721. It was the most popular English dictionary of the eighteenth century until the publication of Samuel Johnson's massive dictionary in 1755. As an indicator of its popularity, the dictionary reached its 20th edition in 1763[1] and its 27th edition in 1794.[2] Its last edition (30th) was in 1802. It was a little over 900 pages long. In compiling his dictionary, Bailey borrowed greatly from John Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1706), which in turn drew from the later editions of Edward Phillips's The New World of English Words. Like Kersey's dictionary, Bailey's dictionary was one of the first monolingual English dictionaries to focus on defining words in common usage, rather than just difficult words.

  1. ^ The 20th edition of Bailey's Dictionary, dated 1763, is downloadable at Archive.org.
  2. ^ Reported by librarian Philip N. Cronenwett, year 1997, at Dartmouth.edu Library Bulletin, who also reports that in the 18th century Bailey's dictionary "was almost universally accepted as the dictionary of choice".