The English Dialect Dictionary

The English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) is the most comprehensive dictionary of English dialects ever published, compiled by the Yorkshire dialectologist Joseph Wright (1855–1930), with strong support by a team and his wife Elizabeth Mary Wright (1863–1958).[1] The time of dialect use covered is, by and large, the Late Modern English period (1700–1903),[2] but given Wright's historical interest, many entries contain information on etymological precursors of dialect words in centuries as far back as Old English and Middle English. Wright had hundreds of informants ("correspondents") and borrowed from thousands of written sources, mainly glossaries published by the English Dialect Society in the later 19th century, but also many literary texts written in dialect. In contrast to most of his sources, Wright pursued a scholarly linguistic method, providing full evidence of his sources and antedating modes of grammatical analysis of the 20th century. The contents of the EDD's nearly 80.000 entries (including the Supplement) were generally ignored during the 20th century[3] but were made accessible by the interface of EDD Online, the achievement of an Innsbruck University research project first published in 2012 and repeatedly revised since (version 4.0 in March 2023).[4]

  1. ^ "Elizabeth Mary Wright". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  2. ^ McDonald, Clay. "What are the characteristics of late Modern English?". spudd64.com. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
  3. ^ Crystal, David (2015). The Disappearing Dictionary: A Treasury of Lost English Dialect Words. London: Pan Macmillan. p. xviii: "...I wanted to celebrate one of the greatest - yet most neglected - lexicographic achievements of modern times.".
  4. ^ Markus, Manfred (2021). English Dialect Dictionary Online: A New Departure in English Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.