Dictionary of Early English

Philosophical Library, 1955. — 766 p.Mr. Shipley's Dictionary has been a delight to me, and I can imagine no reader, erudite or otherwise, to whom it will be anything less than that, I claim no erudition in my own case; I am not a student of the English language of its history, at any rate nor am I, to tell the truth, a scholar of any sort. But this does not prevent me from taking a lively and perpetual interest in the words men use and have used. There is a sense in which man lives by words more than he does by bread; neither is enough for life alone, but whereas all animals must eat in order to keep on being themselves, only man must talk to this same end. And Mr. Shipley shows him, in so far as he talks English, as having pleased himself, generation after generation, by more words than we might suppose would ever be remembered, let alone written or spoken in their time.Preface by Mark Van Doren