You Could Look It Up: The Reference Shelf From Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia

by Jack Lynch

  This is the paradox of research in the “postgoogluvian era.” We are now nearer to the encyclopedic dream than any society has ever been. From one source—not a library, not a set of books, but a computer connected to most of the other computers around the world—we come closer than ever before to having all the world’s information at our fingertips. I hope my survey of attempts to collect the world’s information from the third millennium B.C.E. through today serves as a reminder of the sheer variety of information sources out there and helps to keep us attentive to the need for multiple sources of information, multiple ways of organizing the world, multiple points of view. I hope, too, that the lesson about the impossibility of ever achieving the encyclopedic dream induces a healthy skepticism about the sources we do have.

  A BRIEF

  ETYMOLOGICAL

  GLOSSARY

  abecedarium Used in the Old English period to refer to the alphabet, taking its name from A, B, C, D. It was later used to refer to dictionaries, glossaries, and primers.

  almanac A mystery: it shows up in the thirteenth century, and it seems to come from the Arabic al-manakh—except that no one has found manakh in Arabic. Chaucer was the first English writer to mention this kind of book, which provided information on the calendar and positions of the stars and planets. Later almanacs have included information on holy days, weather, tide tables, and planting dates.

  annals Latin annus ‘year’ provides the root; annals are histories organized year by year.

  atlas In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan who bore the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. Gerardus Mercator included a depiction of Atlas on his collection of maps, and since then the word has been applied to cartographical compilations that cover a wide area.

  bibliography Greek βιβλον (biblion) ‘book’ and γράφειν (graphein) ‘to write’. A relative newcomer to English, showing up with its meanings “the study of books” and “a list of books” only in 1814.

  book Most Germanic languages have a form like book; they may be derived from beech, perhaps because early books were made from the bark or wood of beech trees. Like Latin liber (source of French livre, Spanish libro, and Italian libro) and Greek βιβλον (biblion), English book has been applied to various forms of text packaging, from scrolls to codices to e-readers. Its meanings are slippery: it can refer to a section of a longer work (as in an epic poem), or one volume in a multivolume set, or the whole title in however many volumes; it can mean both a single copy and a full edition. See also codex.

  catalog(ue) Greek κατά (kata) ‘down’ and λέγειν (legein) ‘pick, choose’ combined to form κατάλογος (katalogos) ‘register, list’, which made its way into Latin as catalogus, then into French as catalogue. When it appeared in English in 1460 it meant any list; since the 1660s it has implied “systematic or methodical arrangement, alphabetical or other order.” The French phrase catalogue raisonné is sometimes used in English for a systematic list of all the works of an artist.

  chronology Χρόνος (chronos) is Greek for “time”; λογα (logia) has many meanings, but “discourse” is one. Chronology has long meant the understanding of the passage of time, but since the seventeenth century, at least in English, it has also meant a timeline, a list of events arranged in chronological order.

  codex Latin caudex means tree trunk, or a tablet made from its wood. Eventually the word came to mean a book formed by hinged leaves joined along a spine, as opposed to a scroll. The word codex is also the source of the word code, in the sense of both “legal code” and “cipher.”

  companion See vade mecum.

  concordance From Latin concors ‘concord, agreement’. Originally a collection of parallel passages “in concord” with one another. The OED’s definition of the modern sense is elegant: “An alphabetical arrangement of the principal words contained in a book, with citations of the passages in which they occur.”

  corpus The Latin word for “body” has expanded to mean “A body or complete collection of writings or the like; the whole body of literature on any subject” (OED). In the 1950s, another sense arose: “The body of written or spoken material upon which a linguistic analysis is based” (OED). Corpus linguistics refers to studies based on a defined collection of texts, like the 350-million-word Russian National Corpus, the 650-million-word Bank of English, the 2.5-billion-word Oxford English Corpus, or the 4-billion-word Deutsches Referenzkorpus.

  database Latin data ‘things given’ started being used in English in the seventeenth century. Base, from Latin basis ‘lowest point’, started being used in English for architectural foundations in the fourteenth century. The two words were first combined in Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1955, which called for a “data-base … for this kind of stabilization policy.” Soon it was understood to signify structured information stored in a computer.

  definition Latin finis means end or boundary; definire is to terminate something—to mark its boundaries. That was one meaning of define when it was used by Chaucer in 1384, but he also used it to mean “To state exactly what (a thing) is; to set forth or explain the essential nature of.” The noun definition followed quickly. Lexicographers and philosophers of language argue over whether they provide true definitions or merely explanations.

  dictionary Latin dico means “I say”; speech is dictio; spoken things are dictiones. In 1225, an English monk, Joannes de Garlandia, coined the Latin word dictionarius to refer to a collection of words. The Romance languages inherited the term, as in French dictionnaire, Italian dizionario, and Spanish diccionario. They provide information about words—generally the grammatical classes to which a word belongs, its origin or etymology, and one or more definitions. Dictionaries can be monolingual, bilingual, or polyglot; they can be general or specialized; they can be synchronic (looking at the language at one moment) or diachronic (looking at language change over time). Other terms for what we call a dictionary have included abecedarium, alphabetum or alphabet, alvearium or alveary, biblioteca, declaration, descriptio, expositor, glossarium or glossary, hortus, lexicon, liber floridus, manipulus, medulla, promptuarium, promptorium, repertorium, summa, tabula, terminarius, thesaurus or thrésor or treasury, vocabularius or vocabulary, vulgaria, or wordbook. The word dictionary is also sometimes used for more encyclopedic collections, as with a biographical dictionary.

  directory The classical Latin dirigere means “to direct”; in the Middle Ages, something that helps to direct—to give directions—became known as a directorium. James Harrison made it an English word in 1543 when he promised his book would include “An alphabetycall dyrectorye or Table.” The word has been applied to many varieties of reference books, especially guides to authorized prayers in the seventeenth century and “lists of the inhabitants of any locality, with their addresses and occupations” in the eighteenth. Telephone numbers were added to directories early in the twentieth century.

  enchiridion The Greek χερ (kheir or chir) means “hand”—the same root appears in chiropractor (one who works with his hands) and even in surgeon, which was once spelled chirurgeon. An enchiridion is therefore something small that goes in the hand—a handbook. In 1541, Miles Coverdale suggested that in compiling the first five books of the Bible, Moses made “an enchiridion and sum of all the acts of his time.”

  encyclopedia From Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεα (enkuklios paideia). The -cyc- root is from Greek κύκλος (kyklos) ‘circle’, and the -ped- or -paed- root is from παιδεα (paideia), ultimately from παῖς (pais) ‘child’, which means education or child rearing; the same root appears in pediatrician and pedagogy. The late Latin word encyclopaedia was long assumed to mean “the circle of learning” or “the circle of the sciences,” but it actually meant something like “rounded education.” Not until 1644 did the English use it to refer to a kind of book.

  entry French entrer comes from Latin intrare ‘go into’. The noun entry ‘that by which any place is entered’ appears in 1297, and
‘the action of coming or going in’ in 1330. A few decades later clerks could enter names and numbers into records, and the things so registered have been called entries since 1556.

  etymology In Hellenistic Greek, ἔτυμον (etymon) is the “true” or literal sense of a word. It got picked up in postclassical Latin, where it meant “word” more generally. Etymology, which started being used as an English word a little before 1400, is the study of word origins.

  folio From Latin folium ‘leaf’, referring to the leaves of a book. A folio is the largest format of codex book, with sheets folded just once before being bound. A typical folio book is 15–20” (38–50 cm) tall, though a so-called “elephant folio” can be as tall as 50” (127 cm). Other formats are smaller: a quarto, with the sheets folded twice, is typically about 12” (30 cm) tall, and an octavo, with the sheets folded three times, about 9” (23 cm) tall.

  gazetteer A gazetta was a small coin used in early modern Venice. The Italian word made its way into French and then English. Because, some speculate, Venetian newspapers typically cost one gazetta, it came to mean a news sheet, and a gazetteer was a news reporter. In 1692, Laurence Echard used the word in the title of The Gazetteer’s, or, Newsman’s Interpreter: Being a Geographical Index, and the term stuck for geographical dictionaries.

  glossary Greek γλσσα (glossa) means “tongue” or “language.” Originally a gloze, glose, or gloss was a word written in the margins or between the lines of a manuscript to explain the text. These marginal or interlinear explanations in the Bible or in legal texts were glosses; when they were all collected together, to give a list of words and passages that needed explanation, they became a glossary.

  ghost word A word that appears in a dictionary accidentally, without having any existence in the larger world. See chapter 10½.

  handbook The English was inspired by Latin liber manualis (the origin of our word manual) and Greek enchiridion. Handbook first showed up in English around the year 1000, when the monk Byrhtferð of Ramsey wrote of his “enchiridion (þæt ys manualis on Lyden and handboc on Englisc)”—“that is, manual in Latin and handbook in English.” Around 1538 the author of the Encheridyon of a Spyrytuall Lyfe explained the name: “It is called encheridion, in englysh, an hand booke, not only bycause it is small and portatyue [portable], but bycause it is (for the fruyte and vtylite [utility] therin) worthy and necessary to be had in in euery mans hande.” Related words appear in many Germanic languages: Dutch handboek, German Handbuch, Old Icelandic handbók.

  headword An obvious etymology from a pair of English words for the word that serves as a heading in a reference book—the word being defined in a dictionary, the entry being discussed in an encyclopedia. Headwords are often typographically distinctive (capitals, boldface, indented, large type) to facilitate skimming. Sometimes known as a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata), from Greek λῆμμα ‘something taken’. Headwords are often reduced to their most basic form: approvingly appears under approve. The process of reducing words to this form is called lemmatization.

  herbal Latin herba ‘grass, green crops’ became French erbe became Middle English erbe around 1290, a plant without a woody stem. In medieval Latin a book about plants was a liber herbalis, which led to the practice of referring to an English book about plants—especially the medical uses of plants—as a herbal in 1516.

  index Latin index ‘forefinger’ comes from dic- ‘to point out’—compare indicate. English picked up the forefinger meaning at the end of the fourteenth century; it came to mean any sort of pointer, literal or metaphorical, at the end of the sixteenth century. One of those “pointers” was the list of names or subjects that “pointed” to the places they appeared in a book. Early modern books often had more than one index: an index nominum for names, an index locorum for places, and an index rerum for subjects.

  information A complicated word with a complicated history—as James Gleick notes, the revised OED entry for the word “now runs 9,400 words, the length of a novella. It is a sort of masterpiece—an adventure in cultural history.” The Latin root forma ‘shape, appearance’ led to informare ‘to give form to, to shape’. An act of giving shape is Latin informatio, which could also mean “teaching”—the word’s first English meaning, starting in the late fourteenth century. From there it came to encompass knowledge or news more generally. Mathematicians came up with formal definitions starting in the early twentieth century, and they discovered surprising connections between information and entropy.

  latent words Latin latens ‘lurking, hiding’ gives us latent. Some lexicographers use the term latent words to refer to those for which there are no records of their ever having existed, especially derived forms. Restaurantlike, pentagonality, liturgicalness, and uncruciform are perfectly plausible English words—they are not ghost words, which are the result of accident—but they may never have been used in the real world. Some dictionaries, eager to run up their word count for advertising purposes, list many such words.

  lexicographer A postclassical Greek word, from λεξικόν (see below) and γράφειν (graphein) ‘to write’. Since 1658, lexicographer has been the English word for a writer of dictionaries. Samuel Johnson’s famous definition may be the final word on the subject: “a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.”

  lexicon We can trace it all the way back to Greek λέγειν (legein) ‘to speak’; from that root came the noun λέξις (lexis) ‘word, phrase’ and the adjective λεξικός (lexikos) ‘related to words’. A βιβλον λεξικόν (biblion lexikon) was a wordbook. Today lexicon is often used interchangeably with dictionary, although in German-speaking countries it is often used for encyclopedic works.

  manual See handbook.

  mountweazel An invented entry in a reference book, giving information on something that does not exist. See chapter 10½.

  pharmacopoeia Greek φάρμακον (pharmakon) has a disconcerting range of meanings, running from “medicine” to “poison”; ποιεν (poiein) means “to make.” The art of compounding drugs became pharmacopée in French in 1571, and by 1618 a book listing approved drugs and how to make them was known as a pharmacopoeia or pharmacopeia.

  reference The verb refer comes from Middle French referer or referir ‘put in connection’, which in turn comes from Latin re ‘back’ + ferre ‘bear, carry’. The verb showed up in English in the late fourteenth century and got its meaning of “consult” in 1574. The noun reference was used in English from the end of the sixteenth century, and the compound reference book from 1771.

  table One of the oldest words in English. Latin tabula, its source, had a range of meanings, including a piece of furniture with legs supporting a flat surface and a tablet on which laws were written. It already meant “a systematic arrangement of numbers, words, symbols, etc., in a definite and compact form” in the Old English period, around the year 1000.

  thesaurus Greek θησαυρός (thesauros) is a treasury or a storehouse—it is the root of treasure. It appears in the titles of a number of wordbooks: Thomas Cooper’s Latin–English dictionary of 1565 was titled Thesaurus linguæ romanæ et britannicæ and Henri Estienne published his Thesaurus linguae graecae in 1572. It took on new life, and a new meaning, when Peter Mark Roget used it to refer to his thematically organized dictionary in 1852.

  union catalog Latin unus ‘one’ produced unio ‘oneness, unity.’ A union catalog(ue) brings together the holdings of many libraries into one sequence.

  vade mecum The Latin is simple enough: “come with me.” An easily carried book that promises to guide its reader through complexities.

  vocabulary Latin vocare ‘to call or name’ gives vocabulum ‘something called or named’, and a collection of these vocables is a vocabulary. Today it often means a list of words a beginner is striving to learn, or the total number of words an individual knows, but it is also used as a synonym for dictionary or lexicon.

&n
bsp; volume Latin volumen comes from volvere ‘to roll’; it recalls the days when books were scrolls. Today volume usually refers to a codex. Because there is a practical limit to how many leaves can be bound together, long reference books often fill multiple volumes. A near synonym, and the word used in the Romance languages, tome, is from τόμος (tomos) ‘section of a book’, itself derived from τέμνειν (temnein) ‘to cut’.

  wordbook The Germanic roots word and book are both very ancient, but it took until 1598 for John Florio to combine them as word-book. In English, says the OED, “The term is sometimes used specifically to avoid the implication of completeness or elaboration of treatment characteristic of a dictionary or lexicon.” Dutch woordboek and German Wörterbuch, though, have no such connotations.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To do this properly, I’d have to thank pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to in the last half dozen years, since there’s hardly a soul who has escaped my requests for suggestions. But I’ll single out a few for particular thanks: Lauren Avirom, David Azzolina, Celia Barnes, Lisa Berglund, Kevin Berland, Brycchan Carey, Paul Charosh, Elizabeth Denlinger, Jonathan Ellis, Mimi Ezust, Janet Ing Freeman, Cynthia Gibson, Anthony Grafton, Tom Guilbert, Steve Gustafson, Rachel Hadas, Kristine Haugen, Joe Holub, Simon Hornblower, Jacqueline Hylkema, Dale Ireland, Jan Lewis, Tabitha McIntosh, James J. O’Donnell, Ann Peters, John Pollack, Jessica Richard, Rebecca Shapiro, Ammon Shea, Jesse Sheidlower, Peter Sokolowski, Peter Stallybrass, Kory Stamper, Tim Stewart-Winter, John Stone, Christopher Stray, Dan Traister, Sarah Werner, Phil Yeagle, and Ben Zimmer.

  My research assistant, Rachel Niemczyk, has been indispensable, helping me collect and organize close to a million words of notes.

  As always, it has been a pleasure to work with George Gibson at Bloomsbury, for whom I hope the chapter “Overlong and Overdue” has served to put my own missed deadlines in some kind of perspective.