Adelung’s English-German dictionary (1783, 1796): Its achievements and its relationship to the dictionaries of Samuel Johnson and Johannes Ebers

Nicola McLelland
University of Nottingham
Summary

This article examines Johann Christoph Adelung’s English–German dictionary (1783, 1796). The dictionary deserves our attention because it was undertaken by the author of a ground–breaking German dictionary (Adelung 1774–86, 2 1793–1801), working from Samuel Johnson’s equally epoch–making English dictionary (1755, 41773). Yet the work has thus far been almost entirely overlooked. This article seeks to address that research gap. It reveals the very significant differences between the first dictionary volume (1783) and the second (1796), and argues that the second volume – for which a dictionary by Johannes Ebers is a major source (Ebers 1793–1794) – is almost certainly not the work of Adelung at all. Close analysis of the first volume nevertheless reveals the care that Adelung took with it, drawing not just on Johnson, but also on his own German dictionary and other sources, resulting in a dictionary that was innovative in English–German lexicography. I also show that Adelung’s experience of preparing the English–German dictionary informed his revision of his better–known German dictionary (1793–1801) in at least two concrete ways: his treatment of pronunciation and his use of metalinguistic labelling.

Publication history

Date received: 27 June 2023

Date accepted: 5 November 2023

Published online: 12 February 2024

Table of contents

This article offers the first detailed examination of Johann Christoph Adelung’s English-German dictionary (1783, 1796). Thus far neglected, the dictionary ought to be of particular interest in lexicographical history, because its starting point is the nearest thing English had to an academy dictionary (Johnson 1755, 41773), and it was produced by the author of the nearest thing Germany had to an academy dictionary (Adelung 1774–86, 2 1793–1801). Adelung and Johnson were already viewed as comparable figures at the time, as a review in The Critical Review of a translation of three essays by Adelung (to which I return below) attests: “His [i.e. Adelung’s] dictionary of the German language is the completest lexicographical work ever published; and, compared with it, the dictionary compiled by Dr. Johnson is a trifling work” (Anon. 1798: 447). Yet although Adelung is one of the best-researched lexicographers of German (Haß-Zumkehr 2001: 107), his English-German dictionary has received only the most cursory attention to date. It did not rate a mention in Jellinek’s review of Adelung’s achievements (Jellinek 1913, vol. 2: 329–331), it did not feature in the biography of Adelung by Strohbach (1984), and none of the contributions in Kämper et al. (2008) dealt with it. In a monograph on Adelung, François (2020a: 150–158) devoted a few pages to the dictionary, but an unpublished Masters thesis (Zimmermann 2003) remains the most detailed examination to date. This article seeks to address this research gap, and, in so doing, to point out something which previous research has failed to recognize: the significant differences between the 1783 first volume of the dictionary and the second volume, published only in 1796, which make it highly unlikely that the second volume is the work of Adelung at all. Close analysis of the first volume nevertheless shows the care that Adelung took with it, drawing not just on Johnson, but also on his own German dictionary and other sources, and highlights its innovation in its semantic contents. I also show that Adelung’s experience of preparing the English-German dictionary informed his revision of his better-known German dictionary in at least two concrete ways.

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