English lexicology and lexicography is that field in

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

studies which examines English lexicon, English word-formation, the evolution of

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

and the

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

of English dictionaries.

*Bauer, L. 1993. English Word-formation, “Cambridge textbooks in Linguistics”, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press *Baugh, A.C./ Cable, Th. 1993. A History of the English Language. London: Routledge *Burkett, Eva Mae. 1939. American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861. New York: ... *Friend, J.H. 1967. The Development of American Lexicography 1798–1864. The Hague: Mouton *Green, J. 1996. Chasing the Sun. Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made. London: Jonathan Cape *Hartmann, R.R.K. ed. 1986. The History of Lexicography. Papers from the Dictionary Research Centre Seminar at Exeter, March 1986. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins *Murray, J.A.M. 1900. Evolution of English Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press *Nielsen, S. 2008. The Effect of Lexicographical Information Costs on Dictionary Making and Use. ''Lexikos'' 18: 170–189. *Starnes, D.T./ Noyes, G.E. 1946. The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, 1604–1755. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press *Stein, G. 1985. The English Dictionary before Cawdrey. (Lexicographica, Series Maior, 9). Tübingen: Niemeyer *Murray, K.M. Elizabeth. 1977. Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press *Reddick, A. 1990. The Making of Johnson's Dictionary 1746–1773. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press *Snyder, K.A. 1990. Defining Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic. University Press of America {{English-lang-stub

Further reading