''A New English Dictionary: or, a complete collection of the most proper and significant words, commonly used in the language'' was an English dictionary compiled by

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

John Kersey John Kersey the younger ( fl. 1720) was an English philologist and lexicographer of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He is notable for editing three dictionaries in his lifetime: '' A New English Dictionary'' (1702), a revise ...

and first published in London in 1702.

Differences from previous dictionaries

Unlike previous dictionaries, which had focused on documenting difficult words, ''A New English Dictionary'' was one of the first to focus on words in common usage. It was also the first to be written by a professional lexicographer.

Kersey's subsequent works

Kersey later continued his lexicographic career by enlarging Edward Phillips' '' The New World of English Words'' in 1706 and editing the ''

Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum The ''Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum'' is a dictionary compiled by philologist John Kersey, which was first published in London in 1708. It was the third dictionary he had edited, after his 1702 '' A New English Dictionary'' and his 1706 revisi ...

'' in 1708.

Similarly-titled work

The original title of the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

'' was ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles'', and it was sometimes given the abbreviation ''NED'', for ''New English Dictionary''.

References

1702 non-fiction books 1700s in London English dictionaries Works by John Kersey the younger {{dictionary-stub