The English Dialect Society was the first dialect society founded in England. It was founded in 1873 but wound up after the publication of Joseph Wright's ''

English Dialect Dictionary English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

'' had begun.

History

Such a society was first proposed by

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in 1870. It was founded in 1873 with

W. W. Skeat Walter William Skeat, (21 November 18356 October 1912) was a British philologist and Anglican deacon. The pre-eminent British philologist of his time, he was instrumental in developing the English language as a higher education subject in th ...

as its secretary. The society's publications were divided into four series: bibliographies, reprinted glossaries, original glossaries and miscellanies. One unsatisfactory feature of the publications is that they are often arranged by counties whereas dialect boundaries rarely coincide with county boundaries. Some of the material published by the society was included in Joseph Wright's ''English Dialect Dictionary''. Collectors of dialect words were discouraged from proposing etymologies on the ground that in so doing they might distort the meaning of the words they were collecting. In 1876 the society's headquarters was transferred from Cambridge to Manchester where it remained until a further transfer to Oxford in 1893. The society's library remained at Manchester and was presented to the Manchester Free Library. It consisted of some 800 books and pamphlets. John Howard Nodal became honorary secretary and director of the society in 1874. He continued in office to the dissolution of the society in 1896. The following year the first of the regional dialect societies in England was founded in Yorkshire. As of October 2021, this still exists as the

Yorkshire Dialect Society The Yorkshire dialect (also known as Broad Yorkshire, Tyke, Yorkie or Yorkshire English) is a dialect of English, or continuum of dialects, spoken in the Yorkshire region of Northern England. The dialect has roots in Old English and is influ ...

Publications

The publications include: * F. K. Robinson ''A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Whitby''. English Dialect Society, 1876. *

Arthur Benoni Evans Arthur Benoni Evans (1781–1854) was a British writer. Evans was born at Compton Beauchamp in the English county of Berkshire (now in Oxfordshire), on 25 March 1781. His father, the Rev. Lewis Evans, vicar of Froxfield, Wiltshire, was a well-k ...

''Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs''; enlarged edition, edited by Sebastian Evans; English Dialect Society, 1881. * * * * *

google books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

: bibliogroup:"English Dialect Society"

Source

* G. L. Brook (1965) ''English Dialects''; 2nd ed. London: Andre Deutsch; pp. 144, 155-56

History

Publications

Source

See also