English lexicology and lexicography is that field in

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

studies which examines English

lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...

, English word-formation, the evolution of

vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...

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 ...

of English

dictionaries A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

*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