A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English

Although the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the publication of Old English dictionaries, the time of greatest activity was the nineteenth century when Joseph Bosworth, and later T.N. Toller, Henry Sweet, C.M.W. Grein, J.R. Clark Hall, and A.S. Napier were at work. More recently we have had specialized dictionaries, glossaries to newly published texts, and supplements to already existing dictionaries.
The Dictionary o f Old English, for which this volume is a forerunner, will be a scholar's dictionary, designed to replace the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, and to take a place beside the Middle English Dictionary in the series of period dictionaries which Sir William Craigie planned as sequels to the Oxford English Dictionary. While making full use of the lexicographical work of the past, the Dictionary of Old English project will begin with a new and exhaustive collection of materials and will take a fresh look at Old English vocabulary. We are now able to do so because of the intensive work which has been done on Old English manuscripts and texts in recent years, and because of twentieth-century technical innovations such as microfilm, copying machines, and the computer.