Robert died in 1871, a year before the publication of the second edi- tion of the Chambers Dictionary, and William in 1883, after which Robert Cham- bers (1832-1888), William's nephew, became the head of the firm.

The framework of the analysis has been based partly on Hausmann and Wiegand (1989) and their followers, for example Fr^czek (1999), in which one of the recurring themes is the major principle of the theory of lexicographical functions, according to which dictionaries are considered as objects of use meant for a specific group of users (Tarp 2008 Wiegand 1987).Ĭhapter 2 presents an outline of the biographies of the Scottish brothers William and Robert Chambers, the founders of the W & R Chambers publish- ing house. He discusses each of these points in the context of the original edition in Chap- ter 5, and of the subsequent editions in Chapters 6-15. This comparative approach gives scholars and students insights into the procedures followed by the Chambers compilers, the aims they wished to achieve and the problems they encountered during the consecutive revisions of the dictionary.Īfter explaining his way of numbering the editions and his method of sampling to ensure a consistent comparison of the editions, Kaminski expounds in Chapter 1 the methodological and theoretical foundations of his analysis of the structure of the successive editions of the dictionaries: the arrangement of entries, the selection of morphological forms, the choice and growth of vocabu- lary, defining meaning, the order and discrimination of senses, etymology, syntagmatic and paradigmatic information, pronunciation and outside matter.

This study by Kaminski traces the development of the Chambers Dictionary through its suc- cessive editions: the three editions which appeared during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, the first dating from 1867, the nine editions which were published during the twentieth century, the first in 1901, and the second about fifty years later in 1952, and the four editions originating from the first eleven years of the twenty-first century. Price: euro84.Īs there have been few attempts at a systematic study of the history of popular general dictionaries, this book on the Chambers Dictionary, whose tradition goes back to the nineteenth century is especially worthy of cognisance.

Chambers dictionary etymology