Lexicons of Early Modern English is a growing historical database offering scholars unprecedented access to early books and manuscripts documenting the growth and development of the English language. With more than 578,000 word-entries from 168 monolingual, bilingual, and polyglot dictionaries, glossaries, and linguistic treatises, encyclopedic and other lexical works from the beginning of printing in England in 1702, as well as tools updated annually, LEME sets the standard for modern linguistic research on the English language.
Use Modern Techniques to Research Early Modern English!
168 searchable lexicons
114 fully analyzed lexicons
578,089 total word entries
357,740 fully analyzed word entries
60,891 total English modern headwords
LEME provides exciting opportunities for research for historians of the English language. More than a half-million word-entries devised by contemporary speakers of early modern English describe the meaning of words, and their equivalents in languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other tongues encountered then in Europe, America, and Asia. LEME offers:
• searchable word-entries (simple, wildcard, Boolean, and proximity)
• browsable page-by-page transcriptions of the lexicons, indexed by date, author, title, and subject
• a selection list of editorially lemmatized headwords
• lists of headwords unique to each lexical text in the database
• bibliographies of over 800 primary lexical texts, and secondary historical and critical literature, with biographical information on lexicographers
• introduction, help, and information on editorial procedures
Recently added to LEME
John Ray's A Collection of English Words not Generally Used (London, 1674), a group of specialized glossaries with 2,128 word-entries. They explain dialectal words, southern and northern, words for fishes and birds, and terms of art in mining.
Coming soon to LEME
Peter Levins' Manipulus Vocabulorum (London, 1570), a dictionary of 8,940 English-Latin word-entries, organized by English rhyme-endings (with accentuation). This analyzed text owes much to Huloet (added in 2009) and replaces the simple transcription now in the LEME database.
John Rider's Bibliotheca Scholastica, an English-Latin dictionary first published by the University of Oxford in 1589.
Catholicon Anglicum (ca. 1475), an English-Latin dictionary from Lord Monson's manuscript, reconstructed from a 19th-century Early English Text Society edition. The earliest such lexicon surviving in the language holding some 7,180 word-entries, distinguishes itself by the extensive use of Latin synonyms in explanations.
Ian Lancashire
Programmer
Marc Plamondon
Web Development
University of Toronto Library
LEME Advisory Board
Robin C. Alston
Richard W. Bailey
Antonette di Paolo Healey
Anne McDermott
Terttu Nevalainen
Noel E. Osselton
Gabriele Stein (Right Honourable Lady Quirk)
David E. Vancil
Paul Werstine
Terms of Licence for Lexicons of Early Modern English
Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) is a historical database of monolingual, bilingual, and polyglot dictionaries, lexical encyclopedias, hard-word glossaries, spelling lists, and lexically-valuable treatises surviving in print or manuscript from the Tudor, Stuart, Caroline, Commonwealth, and Restoration periods.
LEME is co-published by the University of Toronto Press Inc. and the University of Toronto Library. It is copyright © 2006 by University of Toronto Press.
Licence:
This licence is nonexclusive, nontransferable, for research purposes, and limited as described below. Authorized subscribers are granted:
– a licence to access the LEME website
– the right to search and electronically display materials retrieved from LEME using the search interface
– the right to make printed copies of search results, provided that such copies are not offered for sale, publication, or other distribution.
– the right to save search results as exported from LEME, provided that such data is not offered for sale, publication, or other distribution.
All right, title and interest, including all copyrights and other intellectual property rights, belong to the copyright holders: you acquire no proprietary interest in LEME. You may not copy, modify, alter, adapt, or transfer content from LEME, or create derivative works, except as allowed above.
You may not remove or obscure the copyright notice or other notices contained in LEME.
Terms of access:
This licence is for individual access: you may not make LEME available to others, whether by network, telephone link, sharing of username/password, or by any other means. This licence does not permit use of LEME by institutions such as libraries or universities: please consult the LEME institutional licence and pricing documents.
Individual access is verified by means of username & password, and IP address. To use this site, your browser must accept cookies. You may connect from only a single workstation at a time.
This subscription terminates at the end of its period. The University of Toronto Press reserves the right to suspend or terminate this licence for substantial or material breach of this agreement without prior notice. Written notification of such suspension or termination will be provided to the subscriber. No refund will be provided.
Limited Warranty:
LEME is an ongoing research publication, and content, materials and features may be added, changed, or removed without notice.
University of Toronto Press warrants that it is entitled to grant the licences outlined in this agreement, but makes no other warranties or representations of any kind, expressed or implied, including but not limited to warranties or fitness for a particular purpose.
The University of Toronto Press will not be liable for any delay, downtime, or other failure of performance, but will use reasonable efforts to correct any performance issues brought to its attention. Problems may be reported to journals@utpress.utoronto.ca.
The University of Toronto Press will not be responsible for any damages arising out of or in connection with the service of materials provided hereunder.
LEME is provided on an "as-is" basis. Use of LEME is at the subscriber's sole risk, and the University of Toronto Press will have no liability to any person for any loss or damage arising out of use of, or inability to use, LEME.
General:
This agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the subscriber and the University of Toronto Press and supersedes any prior communication between the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof. This agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario. Both parties agree that any action or proceeding relating to this agreement will be brought to a court of competent jurisdiction in the Province of Ontario, Canada.
(Charlotte Scott, researcher and LEME user)
