#000577
A Greek-English Lexicon
Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott
For a century and a half this has been the standard English dictionary of ancient Greek — the reference every classicist reaches for when a line of Homer, Plato, or the Greek New Testament turns on a single word. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, Oxford contemporaries, built it in the 1840s on the foundation of Franz Passow's German lexicon, and generations of revisers have expanded it since without ever quite scrubbing away its Victorian character. It exists in three familiar sizes: the great unabridged "Great Scott," the "Intermediate" Liddell, and the pocket "Little Liddell," so nearly every Greek student has owned some version. More than a word list, it maps how meanings shift across authors and centuries — an entire scholarly tradition compressed into columns of type.
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The authors
Henry George Liddell (1811–1898) and Robert Scott (1811–1887) were placed together in Oxford's First Class of 1833 and set to work after a bookseller proposed an English lexicon modeled on Franz Passow's German one. Liddell went on to become Dean of Christ Church — and, as it happens, father of Alice Liddell, the girl for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The book
First published by Oxford's Clarendon Press in 1843 and revised across nine major editions since, the Lexicon covers essentially every surviving Greek author from Homer to the Hellenistic era, including the Septuagint and New Testament. It circulates in three sizes: the full "Great Scott" (LSJ), the "Intermediate" Liddell, and the abridged "Little Liddell."
How it has aged
Remarkably well for a Victorian creation. Later editors — notably Henry Stuart Jones — and a 1996 supplement have kept it abreast of papyrus finds, yet its architecture and much of its phrasing remain nineteenth-century. Scholars grumble about gaps and dated definitions but still reach for it first.
For more context
The Perseus Digital Library hosts it free online, and a 2019 Oxford volume tells the story of its making.
Sources - A Greek-English Lexicon — Oxford University Press - Liddell and Scott: The History — Oxford Academic - Perseus: Liddell-Scott preface, 1925
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Place of publication
- Oxford
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Reference
- Location
- Colorado
Places