Ebook An English-Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary

ON the appearance of Mr Sweet's anglo-saxon Reader in 1876, it occurred to me that an English index (if I may so call it) to the words contained in the admirable Glossary appended to it would be useful, at any rate to myself. In the course of 1878 I made such an index. On looking it over, I at once observed that some very common and characteristic words were wanting in it, on account of the necessarily limited nature of the selections. It then occurred to me that many of these could be readily supplied by help of the index to Mr Sweet's History of English Sounds. I accordingly went through that index, and so filled up some of the gaps. In a very few cases I passed over the words thus indicated, because the word was unimportant or the form a little doubtful. Hence the present list contains only such English words as occur (i) in the explanations of anglo-saxon words in Sweet's Glossary to the Reader (first edition); and (2) nearly all the words given in his History of English Sounds. The result is a vocabulary which gives some account of most of the more important words of the language; and shews, on the one hand, what words are still in use nearly unchanged, and on the other, what ideas are expressed by totally different terms in the modern and in the oldest English.