From the Great French Dictionary of Guy Miège to the Royal Dictionary of Abel Boyer: Tracing Inspiration ¹ Revised and expanded text of a paper read at the Second International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology held at the Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, on June 22, 2004. ² We would like to thank Dr. Paul Bogaards, as well as two anonymous referees, for their valuable suggestions and comments.

Abstract:

Praised by Franz J. Hausmann as the best description of the English language at the end of the 17th century, Abel Boyer's Royal Dictionary. In Two Parts. First, French and English. Secondly, English and French (1699) is one the most important dictionaries of all time. It was published 11 years after Guy Miège's Great French Dictionary. In Two Parts. The First, French and English; The Second, English and French (1688), and both works dominated bilingual English-French lexicography in the 17th and 18th centuries. Influential as they were, however, these works remain largely unexplored.

Two previous articles (Cormier 2003 and 2005) examined the influence of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Françoise on the French-English part of Abel Boyer's Royal Dictionary. The current study investigates whether or not the English-French part of Boyer's dictionary was inspired by the Great French Dictionary by Guy Miège. This is a relevant subject given the accusations of plagiarism against Boyer found in an anonymous text attributed to Miège and the fact that, in the front matter of the Royal Dictionary, Boyer made no explicit mention of Miège as a source for the English-French part: he instead rather harshly criticized Miège.

Did Boyer really base the English-French part of his work on Miège's Great French Dictionary of 1688? If this question can be answered affirmatively, what is the extent of that influence? Did Boyer depend upon Miège for the nomenclature, the microstructure, or both? These are the questions this article will endeavour to answer.

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