About 80 percent of the entries in any English dictionary are borrowed, mainly from Latin. Over 60 percent of all English words have Greek or Latin roots. In the vocabulary of the sciences and technology, the figure rises to over 90 percent. About 10 percent of the Latin vocabulary has found its way directly into English without an intermediary (usually French).
This reprint edition of Smith and Hall's A Copious and Critical English-Latin Dictionary (1871) includes the original Preface, Entries, and Index of Proper Names. New to the Bolchazy-Carducci edition is a Foreword by Dirk Sacre which places Smith and Hall's dictionary in its historical and pedagogical context. The Bolchazy-Carducci reprint edition also features a new, enlarged, easier-to-read format.
English To Latin Dictionary
The Promptorium parvulorum (Latin: "Storehouse for children") is an English-Latin bilingual dictionary that was completed about 1440 AD. It was the first English-to-Latin dictionary.[1] It occupies about 300 printed book pages.[2] Its authorship is attributed to Geoffrey the Grammarian, a friar who lived in Lynn, Norfolk, England.[3]
Every single dictionary on this list will have sufficient vocabulary for beginning and most intermediate students. So if you are still in the earlier stages of your Latin journey, I advise you to pay more attention to the other four questions in choosing your dictionary.
You are arriving at the advanced level, and it is time to upgrade to a more comprehensive dictionary. This is where the number of entries really matters and where the specific content of the entries matters.
A dictionary should present the essential forms of a word in a clear way that allows you to determine its stem (or base) with ease. Since Latin is a highly inflected language, it is crucial that you know what you add noun, verb, adjective, and pronoun endings to.
This is much clearer than the mess we are given in the Collins dictionary. As you grow more and more familiar with Latin, you will get accustomed to the abbreviations that dictionaries use. But clarity is always preferable!
Most foreign language dictionaries will go both ways. That is, there will be a Latin to English section and also an English to Latin section. Since Latin is an ancient language, however, there tends to be a greater focus on translating from Latin rather than producing content in Latin.
Most of the beginning dictionaries include a shorter English to Latin section, while advanced resources such as Lewis & Short and the Oxford Latin Dictionary do not. If you know that you want to produce your own Latin, then make sure your chosen dictionary features an English to Latin portion!
The New College Latin & English Dictionary is hands down my favorite dictionary for beginning Latin students. It has won this title due to its clear, informative presentation and helpful supplements. (Plus it is cheap, typically under $10, not to mention small and light!)
This dictionary includes more than 70,000 words and phrases, all with their macrons indicated. My favorite part is the clarity surrounding abbreviations. In each entry, an interpunct () demonstrates where additional endings should be attached, which then allows you to find word stems with confidence.
This dictionary has over 46,000 words and phrases (almost 25,000 less than the New College dictionary). This means that you will need to turn to another dictionary if you are reading texts with rare words.
A strength of the dictionary is its detailed supplements: pronunciation and grammar are covered, as are dates, times, weights, measures, meters, historical and mythological figures, and more. There is also an English to Latin section.
I have a major soft spot for this dictionary, because it is the one that I used throughout high school and university. It was only at Harvard that I switched to Lewis & Short (see more about that below).
This is a true pocket dictionary: it is tiny, but still contains over 35,000 references. There is a substantial Latin-English section and a smaller English-Latin section. Macron use is excellent in the Latin-English side, and word abbreviations are clear.
Unfortunately this dictionary seems to be out of print, but if you can get your hands on a copy, it is very useful! It has less entries than the New College dictionary and even than the Oxford Pocket dictionary, but its diminutive size is a major plus if you are lugging around a heavy backpack.
My favorite part of Lewis & Short is the detailed definitions with numerous examples from Latin authors (with precise citations). I turn to Lewis & Short when I am in despair over an odd usage of a word, and often the very passage that I am reading is cited in the dictionary.
I should note, however, that I typically do not use the print version, since it is large and unwieldy. Instead, I use the free Logeion app created by the University of Chicago. It contains the entirety of Lewis & Short for free, since the dictionary has long since passed into the public domain.
English-Latin dictionary containing about 27,000 of articles. It is based on the transcript of Distributed Proofreaders (see Sources) which is not finished yet, so about 65% of the articles have still not been formatted. Therefore, do not inform me, please, about errors in the text, it will change a lot in the near future.
When I began studying Latin, we used only paper dictionaries (I feel old). When I entered college and had my own laptop, though, I found that one of the early innovators of the internet actually built not just a computerized dictionary, but a tool to help rising Latin students parse their nouns and verbs. Now, this tool is last on the list because it can very easily become a crutch rather than an aid. Our tools should increase our leverage or make us stronger, but an intellectual tool should never replace thinking.
I downloaded Logeion and I love it. I hsve been teaching mysekf Latin for several months now and i like s dictionary that gives you more than the word and a simple translation. I started with Duolingo which didnt teach me much grammar but i did get a good vocabulary. I discovered Linneys Getting Started With Latin and Keeping Up With Latin and now I truly feel like I can move forward with understanding in how things work.
For more thorough comparisons with different Latin dictionaries, including the Latin-Dutch dictionary LaNe, one can use Chicago's Logeion. You can type in either Latin or Greek (transliterated or unicode) and it will bring up a drop down menu for you to select the word (good for seeing a bunch of potentially related words very quickly). Besides LaNe and Lewis and Short, it also includes the Frieze-Dennison's lexicon to Vergil's Aeneid and, great for many members here, the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources for those special Medieval Latin words (e.g. dictamen).
If you're looking for an English-to-Latin dictionary, I recommend A Copious and Critical English-Latin Dictionary, by William Smith and Theophilus (!) Hall. The most recent edition was published in 1871, so there are lots of ways in which it's not really suitable for today: many English words have changed their meanings since then, and many more have changed nuances - I find myself referring to Google to find appropriately archaic English synonyms when looking for the modern word returns no results. However, it's still an excellent resource and the best source of synonyms and phraseology I've yet encountered. It's one downside, besides the archaic English, is that the difference between the synonyms isn't always explained clearly. You can access the dictionary as:
It also has a "word study tool" where you can enter a passage of Latin text and look at all possible translations word by word.This tool works because the dictionary can decline and conjugate all words (you can also see all forms of a Latin word in its entry), but unfortunately there seem to be occasional errors in irregular conjugation.
Thesaurus linguae Latinae (TLL) is a Latin to Latin dictionary by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities certainly has a prominent place in the list, in that it is the most exhaustive dictionary of Latin, and it is available freely online.
I know this is an old post, but I've just found this forum. For the possible interest of anyone else searching for a dictionary I'll offer this free one I did the ocr correction and formatting, etc.: -s-Latin-Dictionary
Latdict is a free online Latin-English dictionary based on Whitaker's words. The biggest handy feature is, when searching by the Latin word, a dropdown displays suggestions with the standard forms of the word. It also has a work-in-progress grammar section.
Benefits: both in french, gaffiot has illustrations and maps, both cover nearly all of classical latin. Have been the dictionaries by excellence for latin studies for all the french speaking world for generations
jclsource.org/dictionary is a good free Latin to English and English to Latin dictionary. It uses Whitaker's words as a database. The rest of the site has lots of good resources, and as a developer of JCLSource, I strongly recommend the site not only for the dictionary. We are still working on improving the dictionary UI and adding auto-fill, but this is still a comprehensive dictionary.
The Latin-English dictionary by Lewis & Short was originally digitized by the Perseus Project. This is simply an alternative interface to that digital version. There are many others as well on the net:The original version at Perseus Digital Library
Pollux: Archimedes Project Dictionary Access
Numen - The Latin Lexicon
ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ
glossa [a latin dictionary]
philolog.us/
Nevertheless, all users should be aware that there are still a lot of proofreading errors in all digital versions of this dictionary. I urge anyone, whenever in doubt, to consult the printed book. A scanned copy can be found (and read online) at the Internet Archive. 2ff7e9595c
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