Etymologicum Magnum

The Etymologicum Magnum (Ancient Greek: Μέγα Ετυμολογικόν; Mega Etymologikon/Etymologicon) or Etymologicum genuinum was a grammatical encyclopedia edited at Constantinople in the 9th century AD. The work, which is alphabetical to the third letter, borrows from Choiroboskos, Herodian, Methodius, Orion, Oros and Theognostos. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, took up the Etymologicum, which had been started by an unknown grammarian. In this and the recension called Etymologicum parvum that followed it Photius became the founder of the Greek etymological lexical works that were compiled in the 12th and 13th centuries, such as the etymologies known under the titles Etymologicon magnum and Etymologicum Symeonis; their manuscript sources are sometimes more complete. Its modern name was given it by its editor in the nineteenth century, Richard Reitzenstein. No existing manuscript of the work is complete. Most of the Etymologicum Genuinum remains unpublished, and some of the only published material is of the 19th century. These etymologies are useful for the quotations they preserve of literary works otherwise lost.

References

• Günter Berger. Etymologicum genuinum et Etymologicum Symeonis, 1972. ISBN 3-445-00974-0
• Robert L. Collison. A History of Foreign-Language Dictionaries. London: André Deutsch, 1982.
• Lloyd W. Daly. Contributions to a History of Alphabetization in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Brussels: Latomus, 1967.
• John Edwin Sandys. A History of Classical Scholarship: "Volume 1: From the Sixth Century B.C. to the End of the Middle Ages" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 3rd ed. 1921 pp. 400, 414f.
• J. Shaw, The Printed Dictionary in France before 1539: 1.1. "Greek Lexica - Fifth Century B.C. to Eleventh Century A.D."

External links

• ΜΕΓΑ ΕΤΥΜΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΝ