[B-Greek] best general purpose lexicon?

Mike Noel mike at vnoel.com
Fri Nov 27 23:49:17 EST 2009


My purpose in learning Greek is to be able to read it.  That's all.  I
don't care to do detailed word studies of NT texts.  I want to be able
to pick up any ancient Greek text and be able to read it with a fairly
good sense of comprehension.   I guess you could say I aspire to be a
non-academic Greek reader.

In light of that, I am looking for a general purpose lexicon that will
cover the vast majority of texts.  If possible I would like to avoid
having different lexicons for Homer, Xenophon, GNT, LXX, Aesop, etc.
Is such a resource available?  For my purposes precise definitions are
not as important as just providing the general idea.  I would expect
to be able to learn the nuances of new words by reading them in
context.  For example, I recently came across the English word
"hight".  Never having seen that word before I had no idea what it
meant but after seeing it in context a dozen times or so I started to
guess its meaning.  Eventually I went to a dictionary and confirmed my
basic idea of what the words means.  I would expect to develop enough
critical mass in Greek to be able to do that as well.  A general
purpose lexicon (or dictionary) should be sufficient to guide me in
the right direction for a word and then I would refine it based on
usage.

Maybe I'm living in a fantasy world...

_M_



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