[B-Greek] an help for the owl best general purpose lexicon?

Leonard Isaksson leonardo1orchardcity at mac.com
Sun Nov 29 07:13:24 EST 2009


Mr. Doctor Owl,

Something that has helped my eyes, which are a little younger than 
yours, but still need and like larger print, is a new printing of the 
'little Liddell'.  Simon Wallenberg, Wallenberg Press has issued a 
printing of the littler Liddell that has a larger type face, in paper 
back.  This is the lexicon that I have beside me for its ease of use, 
and it does make it more pleasant for my eyes.  I usually just remove 
my glasses for reading, and hold a book up closer to my eyes, even with 
bifocals and a recent prescription.

Thank you for your witty post and for the note on Oxford Press' holiday 
sale.

Leonard Isaksson


On Nov 28, 2009, at 6:48 PM, John Owlett wrote:

> Hi Mike,
>
> The Big Liddell just has "H. G. Liddell and R. Scott Greek-
> English Lexicon With a Revised Supplement" on the front --
> Liddell & Scott were the original editors -- it weighs about
> 8 pounds.
>
> The Middell Liddell calls itself "An Intermediate Greek-English
> Lexicon" and weighs about 3 pounds.
>
> The Little Liddell calls itself "Greek-English Lexicon Abridged
> Edition" and weighs about 2 pounds.
>
> The story behind the editions -- or at any rate the version I've
> heard -- is that Henry Liddell prepared the Abridged Edition at
> the time of the first edition of the unabridged edition; with
> the idea that it could be used by Victorian schoolboys with only
> a couple of years exposure to Greek.  With that audience in mind,
> he included quite a lot of irregular verb forms as head words;
> he also made sure that he covered the whole of the vocabulary of
> the New Testament.  But schoolmasters told him that it vocabulary
> was too small to see all pupils to the end of their schooldays --
> it didn't even cover the whole of Xenophon.  So, many years later,
> he prepared the Intermediate Lexicon with a much larger
> vocabulary; to keep its size down, he omitted most of the
> illustrative quotations from the unabridged lexicon and most
> of the irregular verb forms from the Abridged Edition.
>
> I have both the Big Liddell and the Middle Liddell, for the same
> reason that I focused on the weights of the versions in the
> opening paragraphs.  I have a -- probably overly romantic --
> vision of myself sitting in an armchair reading a classical text,
> with a lexicon on the coffee table for occasional reference.  And
> one cannot stretch out a hand and pick up the Big Liddell: it is
> far too heavy and bulky.
>
> The Little Liddell won't do either, for a completely different
> reason: the typeface is too small.  My 61-year-old eyesight is
> not bad -- it corrects to 20/20 with multifocal eyeglasses -- but
> I cannot reliably read breathings in the Abridged Edition.
>
> Oxford University Press has 50% off the Big Liddell and 30% off
> the Middle Liddell in its Holiday Sale (look under Reference):
>
> http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/28359/?view=usa
>
> Alternatively, if you are willing to countenance a computer-based
> lexicon, the Big Liddell is available for no charge in some
> scholarly packages such as Diogenes:
>
> http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.heslin/Software/Diogenes/
>
> Later,
>
> Dr Owl
>
> ----------------------------
> John Owlett, Southampton, UK
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
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