[B-Greek] Barclay Newman's Revised Dictionary

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Oct 11 07:28:53 EDT 2010


On Oct 11, 2010, at 6:33 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

> On Oct 10, 2010, at 5:43 PM, Andrew Suttles wrote:
>>> 
>>> CWC wrote> "... these are precisely the
>>> reasons why I prefer Cunliffe or Autenrieth over Middle Liddell, Danker
>>> over
>>> Thayer, and my own best recollection over Barclay Newman revised or
>>> unrevised."
>> 
>> 
>> Dr. Conrad -
>> 
>> Perhaps you should preface 'curmudgeon-y' statements like this with "Back in
>> my day we ..." and then end your statements with "and that's the way we
>> liked it!"
>> 
>> ha...ha...
>> 
>> Chucklingly yours,

You will have noted the difficulty that curmudgeons have when it
comes to writing grammatical English and/or proofreading their
work, to wit:

> Well, in fact it's the young whippersnapper, FWSFOROS MARKOS, who
> prefers the Victorian standbys, the Middle Liddell (1887) and Thayer
> (1880). I really do prefer BDAG (2000). On the other hand, I really do
> love Georg Autenrieth's Homeric Dictionary of 1895
									     , which
> seems to me a
> splendid and still valuable reference for one reading the polyphlois
-bois-
> terous
> bard. Most endearing about it are the woodcuts that show the details
> of doorlatches and shields and the like. Reading Homer, quite apart from
> the enjoyment of the magnificent verse, involves a sort of study of the
> archeology of the Greek language; Autenrieth's dictionary is a linguistic
> explorer's tool, and one of the few dictionaries I know that are fun just to
> browse through.
> 
> The revised Barclay Newman may well be an improvement over the 
> original, but James Spinti's description makes it appear that the chief
> improvement is the addition of etymological clues to what a worrd
> might have meant in a previous incarnation. My complaint about the
> work is its dearth of real information
. 
> it
It
> is essentially a list of
> lemmas and simple glosses. "My own best recollection" is more a
> matter of recognition based upon repeatedly seeing words in varied
> contexts over the course of many years. The most useful information
> any decent lexicon can provide is an accurate notation of nuanced
> usages with citations of illustrative texts. Newman's work -- the
> older one, at least -- provides little more information about a Greek
> word than what you'll find under the word in an interlinear. I
> think it's the same people who prefer Newman's and interlinears,
> greenhorns still wet behind the ears, not curmudgeons in their
> dotage like myself (snort, harumph ... )

(harumph, snort, snort, harumph)

> 
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 
> 
> 
> ---
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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