Acknowledgments
The Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary has been a long time aborning, far longer than we anticipated. Invitations to contribute were sent within months of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the havoc the pandemic created for schedules and timetables and professional and personal commitments was significant in the affairs of everyone, not to mention the toll it took on health and lives. Indeed, not everyone who initially agreed to provide a chapter could do so in the end, and we are especially sorrowful that Madeline Kripke lost her life to Covid before she could contribute the chapter she was to co-author. Over the three years it has taken to send the handbook to production, we have been indebted to many – the contributors to the handbook’s chapters at the very top of the list. These contributors have given of their time and skills and talents to molding the chapters in the handbook and have shown exceptional patience with queries and suggestions from the editors since the project’s inception. A double word of thanks goes to those who undertook to contribute a second chapter, sometimes on short notice when an agreed author proved unable to contribute; those second chapters helped ensure that every chapter in the handbook was written by a subject matter expert and talented writer. To the five anonymous reviewers of the original proposal for the handbook, whose guidance helped refine initial conceptualizations of the book, we are appreciative, and for their guidance and good counsel throughout the project we are indebted to the editorial team at Cambridge University Press – Helen Barton and Isabel Collins above all – and to Laura Simmons in the production stages.
As editors, we contributed equally to, and share editorial responsibility for, the handbook.
