This heroic and indeed Herculean work: Dictionaries and the heroic

In the 1550s, the son of the best lexicographer in Europe was writing the introduction to his own first dictionary – a collection, with commentary, of all the Greek words used in the works of Cicero, which would be published under the title of Ciceronianum lexicon graecolatinum. His name was Henri Estienne, and the Latinae linguae thesaurus edited by his father Robert was the definitive dictionary of the Latin language. Robert had for some years been working on an enormous dictionary of classical Greek, and Henri explained that his dictionary of Cicero’s Greek was intended to make a small contribution to this great undertaking, ‘this heroic and indeed Herculean work’.

Nearly two centuries later, another dictionary preface was being written. This time, the dictionary was of a whole language rather than one writer’s usage, and of a living language, Irish, rather than a classical one. It was called The English Irish dictionary in English, the language of its definitions, and An focloir bearla Gaoidheilge in Irish. The dictionary would be published in Paris, and would be used by the clergy and clerical students of the Irish College there, and no doubt by those of some or all of the thirty or so other Irish colleges of continental Europe, whose students would return to Ireland to serve a people some of whom spoke no English.