Hi, does anyone know where one can get hold of a Latin monolingual dictionary? OK, not Thesaurus Linguae Latinae or Du Cange’s Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis - I’ve not money or shelf-space enough! But I’ve always found mono-lingual dictionaries invaluable learning modern languages, and it seems odd I can’t find a Latin one. Just a single-volume one would be perfect.
You can get most of Du Cange for free at gallica.bnf.fr. There is also a one-volume shortened version of Du Cange that you can download there. They may have some other monolingual dictionaries. I think, however, that monolingual dictionaries are most useful when compiled by native speakers.
TLL should be available on CD in its unfinished entirety. It hardly costs more than OLD that way.
Thanks for that - what a fantastic site! I even found a copy of Estienne’s Greek-Latin lexicon there, even if completely unusable through too coarse a scanning frequency. I’ve not found the shorter Du Cange yet, though.
Hmm, yet so many lexica use Latin as a second language: Dillman’s Ethiopic, Freytag’s Arabic, Brockelmann’s Syriac, to name just three. And I’m certain that pre-Modern scholars, who’d studied Latin, largely in Latin, since the age of, say, seven, who lectured in Latin and who spoke Latin as their lingua franca when abroad for the discussion of elevated topics were sufficiently native speakers for the task of lexography. I’m less certain, of course, with modern scholarship, but on continental Europe, scholarship in the classical languages hasn’t died off in the way it has in Anglo-Saxony. I remember reading with wonder in Kenney’s The Path from Rome that young priests at the Gregorian University in Rome were still being lectured in Latin as late as the Fifties - perhaps they still are.
That’s good news - a CD I can travel with: a bookcase, no.
Do you or does anyone else have an opinion on Estienne’s Thesaurus linguae latinae as a Latin dictionary? For Classical, that is to say?
Just checked. Eeek - a THOUSAND euros… http://www.saur.de/index.cfm?content=catalog/01_browse/_detail_deep.cfm?id=0000008603&menu=catalog1
I do see that Estienne is available on the Gallica site, though, and Suidas too, in an edition of 1599. Wow!
Yeah, the site is awsome. Funny, I cannot find the Latin dictionary I told you about. It’s Mainge’s Lexicon manuale ad scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis. It used to come up under searches for Latinitatiis, mediae and so on. Of course, if you have Blaise, it is principally based on Du Cange, as well.
Hmm, yet so many lexica use Latin as a second language: Dillman’s Ethiopic, Freytag’s Arabic, Brockelmann’s Syriac, to name just three.
I think that this is done for reasons other than what makes monolingual dictionaries interesting for me. OLD has very good definitions and plenty of examples.
Just checked. Eeek - a THOUSAND euros… > http://www.saur.de/index.cfm?content=catalog/01_browse/_detail_deep.cfm?id=0000008603&menu=catalog1
That’s a bit too much. I never really had to use it, but hopefully all major schools have a copy. Obviously, if I had it on my computer, I would find plenty of uses for it 
I think that this is done for reasons other than what makes monolingual dictionaries interesting for me.
Of course, it was to make the dictionaries available to all scholars of the day. And yes, my use for a monolingual is purely to allow me to bypass English a bit. My lack of Latin past the age of 13 is proving a bit of an inconvenience to me, and I need all the tools I can get to overcome it!
But I do see that Olms reprint Maigne (even if it is 200 euros). Perhaps after the next job…
Cheers,
Johannes
Just keep in mind that Maigne will be of no use if you plan to read Classical Latin.