5. There have been many valuable contributions to Anglo-Saxon lexicography (by Napier, Swaen, Schlütter, Förster, Wülfing and others) since the first edition of this Dictionary appeared, and these have been made use of, but (as before) unglossaried matter has not been systematically searched for words not hitherto recorded in Anglo-Saxon Dictionaries[2].
6. The number of references to passages has been very largely increased. All words occurring only in poetical texts have been marked. If they occur more than once they bear the sign †, if only once, a reference to the passage is generally given. If not they are marked ‡. As regards prose texts, the rule has been only to give references to particular passages in the case of rare words,—more especially ἅπαξ λεγόμενα. The references to AO, CP and Æ which were given in the earlier edition have been retained, as a useful indication that the word occurs in Early West Saxon or Late West Saxon prose, as the case may be.
7. By various devices it has been found possible, while much increasing the amount of matter in the book, to add very slightly to the number of pages, and at the same time to reduce the number of columns on a page from three to two. Most of these devices are more or less mechanical, but one method of saving space may be mentioned. Certain compound words, descriptive of places, which, as far as I know, occur only in charters and which may often be more correctly regarded as proper nouns, have not been separately inserted. Their meaning can however always be ascertained by referring to their components, and where the abbreviation Mdf is inserted the reader will understand that examples of words so compounded, or of the components, or of both, will be found in Birch’s Cartularium Saxonicum, or in Earle’s Land Charters, and that references to those examples are given in Middendorff’s Altenglisches Flurnamenbuch.
8. In the List of Abbreviations, etc. at the commencement of the book, editions of texts which are furnished with a glossary have been specially indicated.
J. R. C. H.
January, 1916.
[1.] As regards the letter W and some small parts of other letters which have not yet appeared in the NED, a reference has been given to its abridgement (The Concise Oxford Dictionary).
[2.] The part of the Supplement to ‘Bosworth-Toller’ which has already appeared shows that Professor Toller is examining such matter with great care and thoroughness.
[ LIST OF SIGNS AND ABBREVIATIONS]
WITH THEIR EXPLANATION
[Note 1.] Where references are in italic type, quotations from the texts indicated will be found in the New English Dictionary, under the head of the English word which is distinguished in the article by quotation marks (see Preface). In references to special passages volumes have been marked off from pages by an inverted full stop, and lines or verses have been shown, where they follow other numerals, by small superior figures. Occasionally where lines have not been given, the mark ´ has been inserted to show that the quotation is in the lower half of a page.