Some Celtic (Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish) glossaries have been preserved to us, the particulars of which may be learnt from the publications of Whitley Stokes, Sir John Rhys, Kuno Meyer, L. C. Stern, G. I. Ascoli, Heinr. Zimmer, Ernst Windisch, Nigra, and many others; these are published separately as books or in Zeuss’s Grammatica Celtica, A. Kühn’s Beiträge zur vergleich. Sprachforschung, Zeitschr. für celtische Philologie, Archiv für Celtische Lexicographie, the Revue celtique, Transactions of the London Philological Society, &c.
The first Hebrew author known to have used glosses was R. Gershom of Metz (1000) in his commentaries on the Talmud. But he and other Hebrew writers after him mostly used the Old French language (though sometimes also Italian, Slavonic, German) of which an example has been published by Lambert and Brandin, in their Glossaire hébreu-français du XIIIe siècle: recueil de mots hébreux bibliques avec traduction française (Paris, 1905). See further The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York and London, 1903), article “Gloss.”
Authorities.—For a great part of what has been said above, the writer is indebted to G. Goetz’s article on “Latein. Glossographie” in Pauly’s Realencyklopädie. By the side of Goetz’s Corpus stands the great collection of Steinmeyer and Sievers, Die althochdeutschen Glossen (in 4 vols., 1879-1898), containing a vast number of (also Anglo-Saxon) glosses culled from Bible MSS. and MSS. of classical Christian authors, enumerated and described in the 4th vol. Besides the works of the editors of, or writers on, glosses, already mentioned, we refer here to a few others, whose writings may be consulted: Hugo Blümner; Catholicon Anglicum (ed. Hertage); De-Vit (at end of Forcellini’s Lexicon); F. Deycks; Du Cange; Funck; J. H. Gallée (Altsächs. Sprachdenkm., 1894); Gröber; K. Gruber (Hauptquellen des Corpus, Épin. u. Erfurt Gloss., Erlangen, 1904); Hattemer; W. Heraeus (Die Sprache des Petronius und die Glossen, Leipzig, 1899); Kettner; Kluge; Krumbacher; Lagarde; Landgraf; Marx; W. Meyer-Lubke (“Zu den latein. Glossen” in Wiener Stud. xxv. 90 sqq.); Henry Nettleship; Niedermann, Notes d’étymol. lat. (Macon, 1902), Contribut. à la critique des glosses latines (Neuchâtel, 1905); Pokrowskij; Quicherat; Otto B. Schlutter (many important articles in Anglia, Englische Studien, Archiv f. latein. Lexicographie, &c.); Schöll; Schuchardt; Leo Sommer; Stadler; Stowasser; Strachan; H. Sweet; Usener (Rhein. Mus. xxiii. 496, xxiv. 382); A. Way, Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum (3 vols., London, 1843-1865); Weyman; Wilmanns (in Rhein. Mus. xxiv. 363); Wölfflin in Arch. für lat. Lexicogr.; Zupitza. Cf. further, the various volumes of the following periodicals: Romania; Zeitschr. für deutsches Alterthum; Anglia; Englische Studien; Journal of English and German Philology (ed. Cook and Karsten); Archiv für latein. Lexicogr., and others treating of philology, lexicography, grammar, &c.
(J. H. H.)
[1] The history of the literary gloss in its proper sense has given rise to the common English use of the word to mean an interpretation, especially in a disingenuous, sinister or false way; the form “gloze,” more particularly associated with explaining away, palliating or talking speciously, is simply an alternative spelling. The word has thus to some extent influenced, or been influenced by, the meaning of the etymologically different “gloss” = lustrous surface (from the same root as “glass”; cf. “glow”), in its extended sense of “outward fair seeming.”
[2] See Matthaei, Glossaria Graeca (Moscow, 1774/5).
[3] See Labbé, Veteres glossae verborum juris quae passim in Basilicis reperiuntur (1606); Otto, Thesaurus juris Romani, iii. (1697); Stephens, Thesaurus linguae Graecae, viii. (1825).
[4] See Biener, Geschichte der Novellen, p. 229 sqq.
[5] Irnerius himself is with some probability believed to have been the author of the Brachylogus (q.v.).