Etymological dictionary


An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's, will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology.
Etymological dictionaries are the product of research in historical linguistics. For many words in any language, the etymology will be uncertain, disputed, or simply unknown. In such cases, depending on the space available, an etymological dictionary will present various suggestions and perhaps make a judgement on their likelihood, and provide references to a full discussion in specialist literature.
The tradition of compiling "derivations" of words is pre-modern, found for example in Indian, Arabic and also in Western tradition. Etymological dictionaries in the modern sense, however, appear only in the late 18th century, with the understanding of sound laws and language change and their production was an important task of the "golden age of philology" in the 19th century.

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Indo-European languages