Irish lexicography

Sanas Cormaic (Cormac's Glossary) is the most famous of these and was compiled over one thousand years ago.

Conchubhar Ó Beaglaoich, a priest and private tutor in Paris and Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín, a scholar from Co. Clare compiled the 1732 dictionary.

While this greatly added to its usefulness as a comprehensive dictionary for speakers of the Irish language, in a sad irony it was also the costs associated with this size that eventually resulted in its not being published during Seán a' Chóta's lifetime.

It was over seventy five years after its completion before it was made accessible by the general public[9] thanks to the work of Dr Tracey Ní Mhaonaigh of Maynooth University, who transcribed it.

The English-Irish dictionaries were produced by Edmund Fournier d’Albe (1903), Timothy O'Neill Lane (1904, 1918),[10] Lambert McKenna (1935) and Tomás de Bhaldraithe (1959).

Ó Dónaill and de Bhaldraithe's bilingual dictionaries and the monolingual Foclóir Beag can be searched for free online[23] and Foras na Gaeilge's New English-Irish Dictionary[24] is available exclusively electronically, as is the national terminology database provided by Fiontar in DCU.

[25] Intergaelic,[26] a resource for speakers of Gaelic languages is provided by Kevin Scannell and Michal Boleslav Měchura.

This point has been skillfully shown with no little humour in many articles written by one of the great lexicographers of the 20th century, Tomás de Bhaldraithe.

In general their research and use of pre-existing sources greatly increased the value and scope of their work.

It is not clear whether ignorance or wit was responsible for the following examples from some of the aforementioned works – “giolla earbuill, a page or train-bearer”; “lachaim, I duck or dive”; “calaoiseach, a juggler”; “bol, a poet; a cow”.

In any case the journey of over one thousand two hundred years travelled by Irish lexicography from the glossist of Würzburg to the new Foras na Gaeilge dictionary is one of which we can be justifiably proud.