LSJ Lexicon with Reflection

Online Lexica for Ancient Greek

Most of the following lexica are electronic editions that can be used interactively online. Others are PDF files that can be downloaded and used on your personal computer. All of these digital versions are available free of charge.

Near the bottom of the page you will find dictionaries in print available for sale.

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ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ

Logeion is a wonderful online dictionary interface that was developed following the example of the Dictionnaire vivant de la langue française, to provide simultaneous lookup of entries in the many reference works that make up the Perseus Classical collection (see below).

http://logeion.uchicago.edu
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Perseus Digital Library

Perseus Banner

The Perseus Digital Library provides a searchable copy of the Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon, a Greek Word Study tool, and access to a phenominal number of Greek texts—and all at no cost!

Unfortunately, Perseus does not support entering search terms in Politonic Greek. You must enter your search term in Persus' transcription using English characters, but there is a key on the search page to help.

Perseus Transcription Guide

Perseus Transcription Guide

English to Greek Lookup

You can also search for English words to find a Greek word with a similar meaning by using the English-to-Greek Word Search tool at Perseus, but this is not the same as having an English-to-Greek dictionary. It only searches for English words within the defintions of the Greek words.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/definitionlookup?
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http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper
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While this electronic edition of LSJ is tremendously useful, it is not as up-to-date as the ninth printed edition. For serious lexical study it is still necessary to consult the paper-and-ink version.

Thesaurus Lingua Graecae

Thesaurus Linguae Graecae

You can also search the LSJ Lexicon at the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae site. You can perform English to Greek searches by selecting "Meanings" as the place to search.

This site requires registration and login.

Philologic

Persus Running under Philologic

You can search several different dictionaries, including LSJ (http://perseus.uchicago.edu/LSJ.html), using Perseus under Philologic on the University of Chicago's site.

http://perseus.uchicago.edu
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Woodhouse at University of Chicago

S. C. Woodhouse's  English-Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language

Woodhouse's  English-Greek Dictionary can be searched at the library of the University of Chicago. While the dictionary is quite old (1910), it can be very useful for anyone learning Attic prose composition.

Souter's 1917 lexicon at Textkit

Textkit provides a PDF version of  Souter's 1917 lexicon . This lexicon should not be used for serious exegetical work, but can be a useful tool for casual reading of Greek texts. Appropriately, the last entry in this lexicon (on page 297) is ὠφέλιμος ("useful").

Alexander Souter's 1917 Lexicon, A Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (downloadable PDF).

Greek Lexica in Print

This is the standard lexicon for classes in Biblical Greek. It is an essential tool for serious study of the Greek text of the New Testament. Originally written by Walter Bauer as Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, this third revised edition by Frederick Danker has expanded citations from the primary literature and corrected entries on the basis of evidence that has come to light since the original publication.

This two volume set is not designed to compete with more traditional dictionaries like the one by Danker discussed above, but to provide two things they do not: definitions and connections to other Greek words with similar meanings.

Most Greek-English lexica provide lists of glosses—one word translation options—rather than actual definitions, but Louw and Nida have provided discussions of the meanings of each Greek word. They provide connections to other Greek words with similar meanings through the organization of the lexicon. Rather than listing entries alphabetically, volume one groups words together that have similar or overlapping meanings. These groupings are called semantic domains. Volume two is an alphabetically organized index of all the Greek words treated in volume one plus an index of English words used in the definitions, enabling the work to be used to a limited extent as an English-Greek lexicon as well as Greek-English.

Designed for readers of the Greek New Testament, this lexicon does not provide definitions, but does facilitate reading the Greek text. For each passage, the lexicon lists those words that appear less than five times in the New Testament and gives a translation suggestion (gloss) for each one.

Online Dictionaries and Encyclopedia of Linguistics Terms

Lexicon of Linguistics

The following online dictionaries and encyclopedia are available free of charge.

Utrecht Institute of Linguistics has produced a well designed lexicon of linguistics that is searchable online. Since the entries have been submitted by various users of the lexicon, there is a natural variation in the quality of the articles.

P. H. Matthews' wonderful dictionary is now expanded and searchable online. It covers a variety of subfields making it a very useful tool for students learning their way through the maze of linguistic theories and related fields of study. Unfortunately, a paid subscription is required for full access. Still, much of the material is available without charge.

The Summer Institute of Linguistics' glossary of linguistics terms is somewhat more limited in scope than the Utrecht Institute Lexicon, but is still very useful. It contains only linguistics terms that could serve as glosses in a text, and excludes broader terms that designate, for example, theories or other entities that could not serve as glosses for words or phrases in a text.

Dictionaries of Linguistics in Print

Several very sound dictionaries of linguistics are available to support your study. Here are some of the best.

David Crystal, author of Language and the Internet, Language Death, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and numerous other books on language and linguistics, has written and repeatedly revised this phenomenal dictionary of linguistics. It covers many different types of linguistic inquiry and models of analysis, providing an excellent resource for any student of linguistics.

Peter Hogue Matthews first published this handy dictionary in 2005. This second edition expands and updates Matthews' work covering a broad range of linguistics terms.

Studies in Greek Lexicography: Articles discussing the work of writing dictionaries

The practice of writing dictionaries is called Lexicography. The following studies in Greek Lexicography are available online.

James Aiken has provided a well-informed discussion of Greek lexicography, including the difficulties in dealing with non-literary sources." His site is worth a visit if you are involved in this kind of work.

Aiken's page is running on a server that does not support HTTPS. To access it, copy the link above and paste it into your browser's location bar.

The team producing the Diccionario Griego-Español has relied heavily on the Thesaurus Lingua Graeca database of Ancient Greek texts. This paper, originally published in Emerita, explains this dependance and the value of the TLG for lexicographical study.

The Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge (UK) hosts a project whose goal is to produce a new Ancient Greek-English Lexicon, "re-examining the source material used in other dictionaries and examining the new material which has been discovered since the end of the nineteenth century."

The single most ambitious project to create a new lexicon of Ancient Greek is without question the Diccionario Griego-Español. Housed at the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterraneo y Orient Proximo (Institute of Language and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East) and directed by Francisco R. Adrados and Juan Rodríguez Somolinos, the project has already produced seven volumes (covering α to ἔξαυος) that are currently available online.

Writers in the ancient world who produced dictionaries or word lists

Ancient Greek Lexicographers

Ἀμερίας (3rd century BC)

Amerias was a Macedonian lexicographer. He is known for a work entitled Γλῶσσαι that included Homeric vocabulary as well as vocabulary from later Greek. Little of the work seems to have been specifically Macedonian.

Ἀριστοφάνης of Byzantium (c. 257 BC – c. 185–180 BC)

Inventor of one of the first systems of punctuation, quite unlike modern punctuation, and used only in poetry, Aristophanes of Byzantium also compiled collections of archaic and unusual words with explanations. His 'punctuation' system used medial (·) lower (.) and higher (·) dots as indicators of pauses and breathing when reading poetry aloud. The segments of text after which these dots were used gave us our modern English words comma, colon, and period. Aristophanes dots did not indicate anything about the linguistic structure of the texts in which they appeared. They only indicated pauses and breathing for oral recitation.

Δίδυμος Χαλκέντερος (c. 63 BCE to 10 CE)

A prolific writer of commentaries on literary works, Didymos chalkenteros also wrote a treatise on words of ambiguous or uncertain meaning (at least seven volumes) and one on corrupt or 'false' expressions. Both are now lost.

Ἡσύχιος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς (late 5th century CE)

Hesychius of Alexandria was a Greek grammarian who flourished near the end of the 5th century CE. He compiled the most thorough lexicon of unusual and obscure Greek words that has survived. It exists now in a single 15th century manuscript.

Φιλίτας/Φιλήτας of Cos (Κως) (c. 340 – c. 285 BC)

Philitas wrote a vocabulary entitled Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι (Disorderly words) explaining the meanings of rare literary words, words from local dialects, and technical terms. This work, now lost, may have taken the form of a lexicon.

Φίλων of Byblos (c. 64-141 CE)

Philo of Byblos wrote, among his many works, a dictionary of Greek synonyms.

Σιμμίας ὁ Ῥόδιος (before 300 BCE)

A tenth-century manuscript—the Σοῦδα—attributes three γλῶσσαι (lists of unusual words with explanations) to Simmias of Rhodes.

Στέφανος Βυζάντιος (6th century CE)

Stephanus of Byzantium wrote a geographic dictionary entitled Ἐθνικά. Only small fragments remain, though an epitome compiled by Hermelaus has survived.