BAILEY, Nathan (d. 1742)
Dictionarium Britannicum: or a more compleat universal etymological English Dictionary than any extant. Containing not only the words, and their explications; but their etymologies ... Also explaining hard and technical words, or terms of art, ... Together with accents directing to their proper pronuntiation, ... Illustrated with near five hundred cuts, ... To which is added a collection of proper names of persons and places in Great-Britain, with their etymologies and explications. ... Collected by several hands, the mathematical part by G. Gordon, the botanical by P. Miller. The whole revis'd and improv'd, with many thousand additions, by N. Bailey, ...
London: printed for T. Cox, 1730.
[818] p., [1] engr. pl. : wdcut illus. ; 34.0 cm. (2º)

A re-arrangement of the contents of the two octavo volumes of Bailey's Universal etymological English dictionary, 1721--1727, which was the first general English dictionary to include accentuation marks. Bailey's English dictionaries also made the first extensive use of pictorial illustration, inserting some 500 small woodcuts 'for Giving a clearer Idea of those Figures, not so well apprehended by verbal Description', and the second edition of the present work (1736) was used by Samuel Johnson as the basis for his own Dictionary, 1755 (q.v.), while the octavo Universal etymological English dictionary continued to be printed throughout the century. (See ODNB s.v. Bailey). The single engraved plate gives 'The Figure of the Orrery in Different Views' by A. Motte. ESTC t87977; Alston, V, 136.

Copy Notes Inscribed in pencil on front free-endpaper £1.0.0, with bookseller's code in pencil on facing pastedown.

Binding C18th sprinkled sheep, gilt-ruled spine, red morocco spine-label.

Reference Number 1315