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Organization of the 1st Edition--grouping of words

One of the particularities of the 1st Edition of the Academy Dictionary is that all words do not appear in alphabetical order. In their preface, the Academicians explain why they have chosen to group words by etymological root:
"Comme la Langue Françoise a des mots Primitifs, & des mots Derivez & Composez, on a jugé qu'il seroit agreable & instructif de disposer le Dictionnaire par Racines, c'est à dire de ranger tous les mots Derivez & Composez aprés les mots Primitifs dont ils descendent [...]. Dans cet arrangement de Mots, on a observé de mettre les Derivez avant les Composez, & de faire imprimer en gros Caracteres les mots Primitifs comme les Chefs de famille de tous ceux qui en dependent, ce qui fait qu'on ne tombe gueres sur un de ces mots Primitifs qu'on ne soit tenté d'en lire toute la suite, parce qu'on voit s'il faut ainsi dire l'Histoire du mot, & qu'on en remarque la Naissance & le Progrez; & c'est ce qui rend cette lecture plus agreable que celle des autres Dictionnaires qui n'ont point suivi l'ordre des Racines."

In effect, by grouping words in this way, the 1st Edition reveals interesting affiliations between words and shows many historical connections between related words that are lost in later editions of the Academy Dictionary. Thus, as the authors claim, there is a certain pleasure in reading this text. (See, for example, the range of words that appear under "SENS" or "MOUVOIR".)

But this organizational structure is also a frustrating one since, in many cases, it is difficult to locate specific entries. The 1694 printing compensated for this problem in two ways. There was an index at the end of each volume that listed the proper root for individual words, and, in the text itself, there were numerous cross-references to direct readers to the appropriate heading. The second edition (1718) adopted a strict alphabetical plan.

In the electronic version of this dictionary, the search mechanism allows users to find sub-entries without knowing the corresponding main root word. Thus, the index and cross-references are unnecessary (although the cross-references still appear in the text). However, in order to preserve the idea of the word groups, the main root word is presented in upper-case letters after sub-entry headwords. In order to see the entire group, the user can simply click on this headword. When the user searches for a word that is considered to be a main root, the result will yield the entire group of definitions (main entry and derived words).

The Preface of this edition, 9 pages, unnumbered.

Timothy Murray, "The Académie Française", in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 267-273.

Alain Rey, "Linguistic Absolutism", in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 373-379.

Professor Buford Norman's Phedre site, complete with links to the 1694 Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française; University of South Carolina, Department of French and Classics.

Initial load of the 1st edition was completed on 27 May 1997.

The indexing of headwords was revised on 28 May 1997 to accomodate the special handling of etymological groups. We welcome commentary on our treatment of this peculiarity of the text.

All of the structure of the document, headwords, sub-headwords, and cross-references were automatically identified from typographic conventions, so we are expecting some false article identifications and some missing articles. Please do report problems to Mark Olsen.