A new french-english and english-french dictionary I. [antikvár]

PREFACE Whoever considers the unceasing progress made during the last few years in all branches of science, art and industry, will easily understand what task lies before the publishers of any Dictionary to keep it as complete as possible, when so many new things have given rise to such a multitude of new words. The task of the lexicographer is twofold when he has to deal with an international Dictionary, since each language has its new words. Frequent revisions are therefore necessary, and every important work of the kind would soon, unless remodeUed from time to time, share the fate of many good, but now old-fashioned and for ever forgottén Vocabularies. Thus, a now excellent Dictionary could not, a few years hence, completely represent the language of the living generation, if it was not revised and modernized. It would, so to speak, be nothing but a fixed representation of the Past. Such was now the great English-French Dictionary of Clifton and Grimaux, which was published about forty years ago, and had remained unrevised ever since. VOCABULARY. - We have kept nearly all the words of the former vocabulary, even such of them as are now seldom used or obsolete. It is not, indeed, useless, it may even be interesting, to introduce into this vast repertory of two languages terms which may surprise or puzzle a reader ,who wishes to become acquainted with the authors of the past centuries. The addition of such uncommon or obsolete words does not materially modify the list of more frequently used terms, and may prove useful to explain them. Every word marked with a cross (+) is either a seldom used term, or an archaism. Among the new words added to our Dictionary, we by no means scorned to introduce a host of familiar or popular expressions, and slang terms, now frequently used both in English and in French. On the other side, it was necessary not to enlarge this work inordinately. We have gained a little space by suppressing the present and past participles which were found in the former text, and appeared to be superfluous. We still, however, sometimes, and even not unfrequently, considered it as evidently useful to give them, whenever their spelling was irregular, or there was any obscurity in their meaning. We have alsó often brought under one head compound words which were formerly presented in their alphabetical order, so as to compress them into a narrower space. We were alsó obliged to enlarge our text by adding the names of the chief French writers. The many literary quotations given as examples are always followed with the