The first English dictionary appeared in 1604
Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, was the first English dictionary, defining 2,500 complex words and democratizing language access for the masses.
The very first English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall, was published in 1604 by schoolmaster Robert Cawdrey. This groundbreaking book defined about 2,500 "hard usual English words," mainly borrowed from Latin, Greek, and French, which were common in scholarly texts.
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