Article: A Dictionary of Electronic and Computer Music Technology: Instruments, Terms, and Techniques.

Dictionaries have been printed since Robert Cawdry published the first English one in 1604. By then Johannes Gutenberg's press had been operating for over a century, bringing with it both enlightenment and, apparently, puzzlement over what some words might mean. The motivation for dictionaries is indicated pretty well in Cawdry's title--he called his work A Table Alphabeticall ... of hard usuall English wordes (London: Edmund Weaver). To be a dictionary candidate, Cawdry reasoned, a word had to be both "hard" (esoteric or easily misunderstood) and "usual" (in widespread use). This saved him from having to consider words that were too mundane or overly bizarre. Cawdry ...

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