Second time around: re-editing Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru

Conference item

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru is the standard historical dictionary of the Welsh language. The project commenced in 1921 with a 27-year reading programme, and editing began in 1947/8 with the first fasicle appearing in 1950. By this time it had been decided that a shorter version of the dictionary would be published initially over ten years, to be followed by a fuller version in due course. However, towards the end of the letter B it became increasingly clear that funding for a separate fuller version would never be forthcoming, and gradually the scale of the dictionary was increased until it became much more aking to the OED in appearance. In fact, the OED was influential in the planning of GPC, with Henry Bradley providing advice in the 1920s, and OUP printing two of the four volumes. After 52 years' work and another 60 fasicles, the dictionary was finally completed in 2002 and launched by Rhodri Morgan at a ceremony in the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff. As soon as drafting the first edition reached the end of the alphabet in 2001, work began on re-editing the two unacceptably condensed initial letters of the alphabet. It had been assumed that this would be a fairly straightforward task, mainly involving the addition of recent vocabulary and adding futher citations to the exiting entries. The scope of the revision has been far greater than originally envisaged, and in effect the dictionary has been completely re-edited rather than just being revised. The number of neologisms added has been far greater than was anticipated, partly because of the increasing amount of material in Welsh available on the Web. The techniques used to discover new words are described, together with some of the main challenges of this major revision.

Authors: Hawke, A

• Alternative title: Presented at Celtic/Scots Lexicography session
• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Language: English
• Subjects: Welsh; Lexicography