I have also made another significant addition to the library, also pictured here. Salvatore Battaglia, Il Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana was begun in 1961 at the Unione tipografico-editrice torinese and in 2002 was finished with the publication of volume 21, Toi-Z. I have been looking up the definition of the word bankrupt and I think I recognize it.
This completes a mammoth task of lexical work, comprising a total of 22, 504 pages, 183, 594 words drawn from 14, 061 works of 6, 077 authors. You hear it said that the dictionary is bigger than the OED (in 20 volumes, with a mere 21, 730 words), though with the online updates it is less easy to be so sure. I am already using this pretty much daily and it is just a marvellous thing.
Two volumes of supplements - which I don't yet have - have been published, in 2004 and 2009, edited by the great Edoardo Sanguineti.
Yesterday, Sanguineti sadly passed away. It is the end of an era of Italian poetry. A great man is gone.
2 comments:
An astonishing achievement. My 'Dictionary of the Irish Language', in contrast, is one volume of specially shrunk pages (four normal pages to a single leaf) on tissue-like Bible paper. I can only read it with a magnifying glass.
oh like the Compact OED? (though it has 16 pages to a page or something like that). I have that too, but had to buy my own magnifying glass. That was a great adventure!
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