Fick, August, 1833–1916, German philologist. Fick compiled the first comparative etymological dictionary of the Indo-European languages (1868).

Armageddon, in the New Testament, great battlefield where, at the end of the world, the powers of evil will fight the powers of good. If the usual etymology is correct, the name alludes to the...

Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm, 1861–1936, Swiss philologist. Meyer-Lübke taught at the universities of Jena, Vienna, and Bonn. He was the author of many works on Romance languages, chief among them bei...

Partridge, Eric Honeybrook, 1894–1979, British lexicographer; b. New Zealand. He studied in Australia and at Oxford, taught briefly in England, and founded a small publishing company. For 50 y...

Lexicography, the applied study of the meaning, evolution, and function of the vocabulary units of a language for the purpose of compilation in book form—in short, the process of dictionary ma...

Hud, a pre-Qur'anic prophet of Islam. Hud unsuccessfully exhorted his South Arabian people, the Ad, to worship the One God. The Qur'an mentions that their incredulity was punished by a decimat...

Onions, C. T. (Charles Talbut Onions), 1873–1965, English philologist, lexicographer, author, and editor. After a post with British Naval Intelligence in World War I, he held a fellowship at M...

Skeat, Walter William, 1835–1912, English scholar and philologist. Skeat took holy orders in 1860, but illness cut short his church career. At Cambridge he served as a lecturer in mathematics ...

Dravidian languages, family of about 23 languages that appears to be unrelated to any other known language family. The Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million people, living ch...

Isidore of Seville, Saint, c.560–636, Spanish churchman and encyclopedist, bishop of Seville, Doctor of the Church. Born of a noble Hispano-Roman family from Cartagena, he spent his youth unde...