Best lexicons available online?

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
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Jonathan Robie
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Best lexicons available online?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

What are the best lexicons that are available online or in electronic format?

Obviously, the LSJ on Perseus: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform

Available in a different form here:
http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/#eid=1&context=lsj

And the Louw-Nida glosses are available from La Parola (but only the glosses):
http://www.laparola.net/greco/

Are there other lexicons on the Internet that are similarly useful?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Best lexicons available online?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I also like:

Pollux: Archimedes Project Dictionary Access http://archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/pollux/
This has a nice interface to LSJ and Lewis & Short's Latin Dictionary, plus other language lexica.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Nigel Chapman
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Best _short_ definitions for Koine/Other?

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Can anyone suggest a source of short definitions of the kind that might be used for basic memorisation with students, or as a note in a reader? For these applications, even complex lemmas would aim for only five or six word definitions.
ἀδελφός -ου, ὁ -- brother
βλέπω -- to see
λόγος -ου, ὁ. -- word, saying, speech, reason, thought (etc).
ἔχω -- to hold, possess, have, be, (etc)
καί -- and; also; even


Obviously, to have the declension ending and article would be nice also. An example of this kind of resource is http://www.letsreadgreek.org/resources/ ... ocab02.txt -- but there is only a small sample vocabulary in those files.

I have the LSJ (via Perseus) and StrongsXML (via Bible Foundation) as files, and thus databases, and any number of books, but these definitions tend toward completeness, and the vocab-oriented books would have to be critically combined to produce a work that could be used and shared freely. There are only 5,300 lemmas in the NT (vs ~35000 in the LSJ; and only half those appear more than twice), but it would still take some time to produce a Creative Commons dictionary for this purpose. The StrongsXML has a KJV_DEF field that might make a good starting point but is full of words like "strumpet" and "lambkin", and has no declension/gender info.

Note: To be useful the resource would preferably be downloadable (not just a web-based lookup tool; though it's possible to write a script to rip accessible data) and either public domain or licensed for re-use, e.g. as CC-BY-SA. I've been looking around for a while, but haven't seen anything like this. Any leads would be much appreciated.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
cwconrad
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Re: Best _short_ definitions for Koine/Other?

Post by cwconrad »

Nigel Chapman wrote:Can anyone suggest a source of short definitions of the kind that might be used for basic memorisation with students, or as a note in a reader? For these applications, even complex lemmas would aim for only five or six word definitions.
ἀδελφός -ου, ὁ -- brother
βλέπω -- to see
λόγος -ου, ὁ. -- word, saying, speech, reason, thought (etc).
ἔχω -- to hold, possess, have, be, (etc)
καί -- and; also; even
.
This sounds like a pretty precise description of the little lexicon by Barclay Newman that's available with UBS GNT's:

A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament
Prepared by Barclay M. Newman, Jr.
© 1971 by United Bible Societies, Edition © 1993 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.


I think all the Bible software companies offer this as a resource -- but of course you have to buy their software.

I've been told repeatedly that this little dictionary really does serve some useful purpose, but it's always seemed to me that one ought to be beyond that not very long after finishing a basic course in Biblical Greek; one really needs to be able to differentiate more precisely and to see an array of exemplary usages for the nuances of words that are really important. This is the dictionary about which Mark Lightman might more appropriately have said,
Later on you will want to upgrade to no lexicon at all.
-- except that students who are serious about study of the GNT really will find BDAG indispensable.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Best lexicons available online?

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Hi Carl,
A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament
Prepared by Barclay M. Newman, Jr.
© 1971 by United Bible Societies, Edition © 1993 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Despite having this in my possession, I had entirely forgotten about it! Perhaps that pays it the respect you were intending --
I've been told repeatedly that this little dictionary really does serve some useful purpose, but it's always seemed to me that one ought to be beyond that not very long after finishing a basic course in Biblical Greek; one really needs to be able to differentiate more precisely and to see an array of exemplary usages for the nuances of words that are really important.


Agreed, as far as later learning goes; this is not an exercise in lexicography. I'm suggesting that 1) there needs to be an initial short place-holder for memorization, which is always an acknowledged approximation. And, 2) for software purposes especially, something so rudimentary should be publicly available rather than only existing under copyright restriction.

I can't legally rip the Louw-Nida from laparola, so unless I can find a similar text in the public domain, I may just have to compile one from a few sources and make it a Creative-Commons document. Going forward, the aim would be to link each word to representative examples of it's uses.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Best lexicons available online?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

A Creative Commons document along these lines would be valuable.

I suspect what you want to do is similar to what laparola.net does, providing a gloss for the word along with the parsing information when you wave a mouse over it? For that, I think it's important to keep it brief.

Strong's is already available in XML:

http://files.morphgnt.org/strongs-dictionary/

It has the advantage that it exists now. I wonder if there's any enthusiasm for starting with Strong's, putting it in a source code repository, and improving it over time to come up with something like a better Barclay-Newman. We could use github for something like that.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Best lexicons available online?

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Hi Jonathan, I've been tinkering with some ideas here; there's a KJV_DEF tag in the Bible Foundation's Strong's XML file which is a suitable starting point. I'll demo something in a little while. -- Nigel.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
JBarach-Sr
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Re: Best lexicons available online?

Post by JBarach-Sr »

While Perseus is good, it does lack some words contained in the NT, LXX, and Early Christian Writings.
I am attempting to include all of them in my lexicon
http://www.motorera.com/greek/lexicon/a.html
It is also available for Kindle through Amazon at
B009GP45LU entitled Biblical Greek Lexicon
Cheers,
John Barach
καὶ ἀνέγνωσαν ἐν βιβλίῳ νόμου τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐδίδασκεν Εσδρας καὶ διέστελλεν ἐν ἐπιστήμῃ κυρίου καὶ συνῆκεν ὁ λαὸς ἐν τῇ ἀναγνώσει. (Neh. 8:8)
[url]http://www.GreekDoc.com/lxx/neh/neh08.html[/url]
Stephen Hill
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Re: Best lexicons available online?

Post by Stephen Hill »

I've found Diogenes pretty handy: http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.heslin/Software/Diogenes/. It has Perseus' LSJ and Lewis and Short in a format you can download and use offline.
ἡμεῖς οὐχ Ἕλληνες• ἀνέλληνες δὲ φιλοῦμεν
τὴν οὐ καρφομένην Ἑλλάδος ἀνθοσύνην. – Headlam
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Best lexicons available online?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

For the New Testament, Abbott-Smith is clearly one of the better lexicons available online for free:

http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/resources ... smith.html
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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