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Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 18th, 2014, 4:41 am
by Stephen Hughes
Wes Wood in the [url=http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2773&start=50#p17493]Xenophon, [b][i]Oeconomicus[/i][/b][/url] thread wrote:[W]here can I find what the abbreviations in LSJ mean? :oops: I have begun to recognize some of them by repeated (mis)use, but I can't flip to the front of a digital copy like I would in a book to find out.
I used the paper copy until a few years ago, so never tackled this particular issue, but I understand how overwhelming the abbreviations can be in that work.

It is the product of a Western European scholarly tradition. Consequently, many of the abbreviations you are meeting are abbreviations of Latin words and names. After you add water to the abreviation and stir till it no longer contains lumps of dry powder, you will still have to learn the English equivalents, eg. Ran. -> Ranae -> Frogs.

In fact, the original name of the work in Greek is βάτραχοι. In a Greek to Greek work, the Greek word is abbreviated.

Additionally, after you can recognise the which work is being cited, to get the most of the data, you then need to acquire the background knowledge to place the work in a genre (Old comedy), a location (Athens) and a time-frame (405 BCE), and associate it with an authour (Aristophanes).

The thing that I'm still working on in that are the time-frames.

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 3:41 am
by Stephen Hughes
There is an extensive list of authours and there abbreviations taken from LSJ here

This seems to not be a new issue. It was commented on previously on this forum and in the list.

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 3:44 am
by Stephen Carlson
I use the on-line LSJ hosted at TLG. Those abbreviations link directly to the source text, so there's no need to look them up on my part to decode them.

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 5:15 am
by Stephen Hughes
Stephen Carlson wrote:I use the on-line LSJ hosted at TLG. Those abbreviations link directly to the source text, so there's no need to look them up on my part to decode them.
Do you have an updated address for the LSJ on TLG? The link given in the previous thread gives an error message.

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 5:29 am
by Stephen Carlson
I just tried http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/ and it worked for me. Does this work for you?

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 5:44 am
by Stephen Hughes
That is redirected and the message returned is
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/503/ wrote:The TLG is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later and if the problem persists contact the TLG project.
Perhaps it is a quirk of the internet.

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 5:47 am
by Stephen Hughes
And now it does work. I can see the dictionary. Thanks.

Definitely more flexible to use as a dictionary for reverse searching than the edition on Perseus!

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 6:02 am
by Stephen Carlson
Stephen Hughes wrote:And now it does work. I can see the dictionary. Thanks.

Definitely more flexible to use as a dictionary for reverse searching than the edition on Perseus!
Great to hear! It's my favorite implementation of LSJ.

Re: Abbreviations used in LSJ entries

Posted: October 19th, 2014, 7:10 am
by Wes Wood
Thank you!