This is a bibliography of early dictionaries that I have found useful in Renaissance dance reconstruction. A bibliography of useful modern dictionaries of, or containing, period words follows.
Blount, Thomas: Glossographia
Bullokar, John: An English Expositor: teaching the interpretation
of the hardest words in our language
Cockeram, Henry: English Dictionarie: or, an interpreter of
hard English words
Cotgrave, Randle: A dictionarie of the French and English tongues,
1611.
Desainlains, Claude: A dictionarie French and English.
Florio, John: Queen Anna's New World of Words
Electronic transcription of dance-relevant terms:
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~andrew/rendance/florio.html
Minsheu, John: Dictionarie in Spanish and English
Nicot, Jean: Thresor de la langue françose,
tant ancienne que moderne.
Palsgrave, John: Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse
Thomas, William: Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar
Modern Dictionaries containing Period Vocabulary
Battaglia, Salvatore: Grande dizionario della lingua italiana.
Not yet complete, this multi-volume dictionary is the Italian
counterpart of the OED.
Faure, L.:
Dictionnaire Historique de L'ancien langage François
Grimm, Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm:
Deutsches Wörterbuch
Huguet, Edouard: Dictionnaire de la langue
française du seizième siècle.
Lewis, Robert E. (managing ed.):
Middle English Dictionary
Simpson, J.A., & E.S.C. Weiner:
Oxford English Dictionary
Real Academia Española:
Diccionario Historico de la Lengua Española
Incomplete. Unfortunatlely, they've only done "A" and started
in on "B".
Turn back to the Renaissance Dance page.