Does anyone know of a 1800 england english dictionary?

Question

Hi, I am trying to find a dictionary that uses the words used back in the 1800s in england I have also been digging through databases if someone was adopted into the royal bloodline if they would be allowed to marry within the royal bloodline. If anyone knows please post and links also really help too thank you!

Answer 1

You can use Google Book search to find PDF copies of early dictionaries ... put Dictionary in the title, select "Full view" and put the date you want to search in the dates field. For example, putting 1860 in the second date box will give you those dictionaries published before 1860.

Adopted ... royal families didn't adopt children as a rule.

Answer 2

The earliest version of the "Oxford English Dictionary", which was often known as "Murray's Dictionary", was first published as "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" on 1 Feb 1884.  Henry Sweet, the philologist who was the model for Henry Higgins in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" (1912), was also one of its compilers. Celia H. is, of course, correct about Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language" (1765) since it was the first modern dictionary and remained the standard for dictionaries until the Oxford University Press began releasing the OED in fascimile volumes in 1884.

A quick google shows that a Swedish royal and a descendant of Queen Victoria of England, Carl Johan Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, has adopted children.  These children would presumably be passed over in any line of succession to the English throne--unless, of course, they were also lateral descendants of the Electress Sophia of Hanover--because of the English Common Law principle of "Heir of the Body" whereby certain types of proprety pass to a descendant of the grantee acording to a fixed order of kinship.  The Crown of the United Kingdom since 1701 has descended to Sophia of Hanover's heirs of the body. "Black's Law Dictionary" further defines the term:

"An heir begotten or borne by the person referred to, or a child of such heir; any lineal descendant of the decedent, excluding a surviving husband or wife, adopted children, and collateral relations, bodily heir.  May be used in either of two senses: In their unrestricted sense, as meaning the persons who from generation to generation become entitled by descent under the entail; and in the sense of heirs at law, or those persons who are descendants of him whom the statue of descent appoints to take intestate estate" (369).

Another Common Law principle to considered when deciding whether to allow someone to inherit would be "Heir of the Blood", meaning, "an inheritor who succeeds to the estate by virtue of consanguinity with a descendant, either in the ascending or descending line, including illegitimate children, but excluding husbands, wives, and adopted children" (Black's 369).

After the birth of Edward VI, even though Henry VIII declared Mary and Elizabeth Tudors b******s, they eventually succeeded to the throne because they were "heirs of the blood".

Answer 3

When you say 'the 1800s', don't forget that this spans from 1800 to 1899, and the English used in Britain changed quite a lot, and the vocabulary expanded tremendously, over that century. Think of the technical words - telegraph, turbine, telephone, machine gun, cordite, dynamite, microscope, hypodermic, dynamo, magneto etc.  All in use by the end of the 19th Century.

In 1800, Dr Johnson's dictionary was still in use - it had been published less than 50 years before.

By 1899, we should be looking to the current edition for that year of the Oxford English Dictionary (first published under that name in 1895).

For what constitutes a member of the (English) royal family, and where adoption might theoretically sit within the succession, try the Act of Succession, still the governing legislation, and perhaps Debrett.