German Loanword Dictionaries

In 1884 the leading purist of that time, Hermann Dunger, complained about the “foreign evil words” in German language. As Dunger noted, this could be recognised throughout many loan word dictionaries: “I have brought together no less than 91 names of authors, and a compilation of German loan word dictionaries created until now, whose authors remain, to a large extent, anonymous (Dunger 1884: 6). The following article seeks to distinguish three types of dictionaries with loan words as entries. These include 1) glossaries of loan words, where entries (words of foreign origin) are described. This particular type of dictionaries contains grammatical and etymological information, as well as an explanation of meaning of an entry or, occasionally, phonetic information (i.e. Köhler, Liebknecht and Weber); 2) Germanising dictionaries, which are of purist character and do not contain descriptions of entries, while their aim is to propose interchangeable expressions (or words) which could substitute the borrowed expressions (i.e. Campe, Dunger, Sarrazin and Engel); 3) descriptive-Germanising dictionaries that not only contain descriptions of entries, but also propose word equivalents (i.e. Heyse, Petri and Saalfeld)—some of them were reissued several times. Between 1800 and 1945 a large number of German dictionaries containing loan words as entries was created. A large proportion of these dictionaries sought to eliminate loan words. The period after 1945 seems to reveal a dominant role of descriptive lexicographic works, as well as Germanising dictionaries. Moreover, Germanising dictionaries containing solely loan words of English origin were also created