A Portuguese 18th-century dictionary rescued from oblivion

Abstract

Abstract The first Diccionario da Lingua Portugueza was published in 1783 by Bernardo de Lima e Melo Bacellar. This title became very successful, as many subsequent dictionaries demonstrate; but the work was a flaw, utterly ridiculed and systematically ignored. This unusual fate for a dictionary may be the outcome of a combination of factors: on one hand, the author himself – a nonconformist clergyman who became a persona non grata in the Portuguese ecclesiastic hierarchy; and on the other hand, his original lexicographic ‘method’ that aimed to provide more information than what was achieved by his predecessors. In this paper, we will present what we know about Bacellar’s biography and describe his dictionary by examining some landscape entries. Finally, we will discuss the role of this dictionary for research within the framework of the LandLex project. About LandLex, see Villalva/Williams (2019: 15–25).