Editing Lexicography (section)

== History ==
Traces of lexicography can be identified as early late 4th millennium BCE, with the first known examples being [[Sumerian cuneiform]] texts uncovered in the city of [[Uruk]]. Ancient lexicography usually consisted of word lists documenting a language's [[lexicon]]. Other early word lists have been discovered in [[Egyptian language|Egyptian]], [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]], [[Sanskrit]], and [[Eblaite language|Eblaite]], and take the shape of mono- and bilingual word lists. They were organized in different ways including by subject and part of speech. The first extensive [[Gloss (annotation)|gloss]]es, or word lists with accompanying definitions, began to appear around 300 BCE, and the discipline begins to develop more steadily. Lengthier glosses started to emerge in the literary cultures of antiquity, including Greece, [[Ancient Rome|Rome]], China, India, [[Sasanian Persia]], and the Middle East. In 636, [[Isidore of Seville]] published the first formal etymological compendium. The word {{lang|la|dictionarium}} was first applied to this type of text by the late 14th century.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" />

With the invention and spread of Gutenberg's [[printing press]] in the 15th century, lexicography flourished. Dictionaries became increasingly widespread, and their purpose shifted from a way to store lexical knowledge to a mode of disseminating lexical information. Modern lexicographical practices began taking shape during the 18th and 19th centuries, led by notable lexicographers such as [[Samuel Johnson]], [[Vladimir Dal]], the [[Brothers Grimm]], [[Noah Webster]], [[James Murray (lexicographer)|James Murray]], [[Peter Mark Roget]], [[Joseph Emerson Worcester]], and others.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Durkin |first=Philip |title=The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford Academic |edition=online |pages=605–615}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Hartmann |first=Reinhard |title=The History of Lexicography |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Co. |year=1986 |location=Amsterdam |pages=24}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Hans |first=Patrick |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics |date=1 July 2013 |publisher=Oxford Academic |edition=online |pages=506–521}}</ref>

During the 20th century, the [[History of computers|invention of computers]] changed lexicography again. With access to large databases, finding lexical evidence became significantly faster and easier. [[Corpus linguistics|Corpus research]] also enables lexicographers to discriminate different senses of a word based on said evidence. Additionally, lexicographers were now able to work nonlinearly, rather than being bound to a traditional [[lexicographical ordering]] like [[alphabetical ordering]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hans |first=Patrick |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics |date=1 July 2013 |publisher=Oxford Academic |edition=online |pages=528–535}}</ref>

In the early 21st century, the increasing ubiquity of [[artificial intelligence]] began to impact the field, which had traditionally been a time-consuming, detail-oriented task. The advent of AI has been hailed by some as the "end of lexicography".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=de Schryver |first=Gilles-Maurice |date=December 2023 |title=Generative AI and Lexicography: The Current State of the Art Using ChatGPT |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecad021 |journal=International Journal of Lexicography |volume=36 |issue=4 |pages=356 |doi=10.1093/ijl/ecad021 |via=Oxford Academic|hdl=2263/93462 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Others are skeptical that human lexicographers will be outmoded in a field studying the particularly human substance of language.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=de Schryver |first=GIlles-Maurice |date=December 2023 |title=Generative AI and Lexicography: The Current State of the Art Using ChatGPT |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecad021 |journal=International Journal of Lexicography |volume=36 |issue=4 |pages=355–387 |doi=10.1093/ijl/ecad021 |via=Oxford Academic|hdl=2263/93462 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>