The evolution of the English dictionary is rooted on the general evolution of the English language. The pressure of vocabulary has always been influenced and reinforced by the intellectual climate of each period of the language. The beginning of dictionary history is concerned with the international language of medieval European civilization: Latin. Very early in the Anglo-Saxon period, one can find glosses containing native English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) equivalents for the hard Latin terms. The next stage development, attained in English around 1400, was the collection in of the isolated glosses into what is called a glossarium, a kind of very early Latin-English dictionary. The first example of the glossarium, was called «Medulla Grammatica» written in East Anglia around 1400. The breakdown of Latin as an international Language and the rapid development of international trade led to an immediate demand for foreign-language dictionaries. The first of such works was rapidly followed by the best known of such works , Elorio`s Italian-English dictionary (1599). Meanwhile, the first great classical dictionary Cooper`s. Thesaurus (1565) had already appeared.
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