Latin Dictionary Is 122 Years In The Making
Or, as they used to say in my first-year Latin class, “Ars longa vita brevis.” To wit: The “Thesaurus Linguae Latinae” was one of many big, scholarly projects taken on by the German government in the late 19th century. Through two World Wars and German reunification, generations of Latin scholars have been chipping away at the same goal: documenting every use of every Latin word from the earliest Latin inscriptions in the 6th century BC up until around 200 AD, when it was in decline as a spoken language. Befitting the comprehensive nature of the project, the scholars will also include some words up to the 6th century AD. The project is up to the letter “R.”
