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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Erazm Rykaczewski’s A Complete Dictionary English and Polish… (1849): Uncovering the Compilation Process

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This paper looks at Erazm Rykaczewski’s A Complete Dictionary English and Polish... (1849), one of the milestones in the history of English-Polish / Polish-English lexicography. Despite its significance for the bilingual user in Poland and English-speaking countries with large Polish diasporas, where it came to be reprinted over the next century, it has attracted little scholarly attention so far. Based on a comparative analysis of the bilingual dictionary and its assumed sources, the paper sheds some light on the methodology of compilation in which borrowing, adaptation, and translation turn out to have been the lexicographer’s main working practice. The findings are presented in a framework which describes the macro- and microstructural strategies employed to create a successful learning tool.