Published under the Auspices of the Greek Language Centre, Thessalonica.
Winner ALA'S Choice Outstanding Academic Title
This is the first volume of the monumental lexicon of modern Greek (mid- 18th century to the present) compiled and edited by Prof. Georgacas (+1990), the publication of which is now being carried on by the Greek Language Centre in Thessalonica.
The letter A (alpha) contains approximately 65,000 entries or about one-sixth of the entire corpus of about 400,000 entries. Subsequent volumes covering the remainder of the alphabet are projected to follow as each is being completed.The Modern Greek-English Dictionary is a unique work in the annals of modern Greek lexicography in that it is based entirely on primary research (all other modern Greek dictionaries are based in their greatest part on previous lexica).
Georgacas and his associates compiled the 2.5 million citations on which this and subsequent volumes are based. The material derives from notations of oral usage and quotations excerpted from newspapers, magazines, folktales and folksongs, collective volumes and anthologies of prose (including prose of special fields like education, medicine, philosophy, arts etc.) and anthologies of poetry, and separate works of individual authors, poets, prose writers, and specialists (over 500 of these are cited in this volume, more in the entire work). Chronologically, the materials represent modern Greek in quantitative progression from the eighteenth century. Useful words and special terms from earlier centuries are included, going as far back as the 15th century.
Besides the entry word, phonemic transcription and grammatical information, and meanings in the English language, each entry includes: an indication of the level of usage, semantic indication, illustrations of meaning with samples of usage and etymology.
Demetrius J. Georgacas was born in 1908 in Messenia, Greece and died in Grand Forks, ND in 1990. He was one of the most productive editors of the Center of the Historical Lexicon of the Academy of Athens (1934-1946), taught at the Universities of Chicago (1948-1951), Utah (1951-1953) and North Dakota (1953-1975. Since 1961 Prof. Georgacas devoted his entire effort to the compilation of the Modern Greek-English Dictionary and to the direction of the Center of Modern Greek Lexicography.
