Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary

by John Taylor (Editor)

The Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary is a brand new dictionary that is ideal for beginners learning Classical Greek at the college level. It covers over 20,000 Greek words and phrases in clear, user-friendly translations, and over 4,000 English words in common usage. The dictionary also offers help with Greek to English sentence construction and prose composition, and provides grammatical guidance with tables of irregular verbs and a glossary of grammatical terms. Additional information includes a list of numerals, a guide to pronunciation, and a map of Greece.

Genres: Reference, Language, Classics, Nonfiction, Dictionaries, Academic

464 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2002

About the author

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Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This dictionary was created in tandem with the paperback Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek published around the same time and also written by James Morwood. The intended audience for these two books seems to have been British schoolchildren or early undergraduates, who would have been reading only easy prose selections like Xenophon and Herodotus, along with a sampling of Homer. This dictionary turns out to be completely inadequate for Greek drama, even the more popular plays, let alone poetry.

At the end of the dictionary is a list of principal parts for 101 irregular verbs. This chart is identical to that in the Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek. It is a pity that the editors didn’t include the second chart, with even more irregular verbs, from the latter book.

All in all, while this might have been a nice budget choice for students who don’t intend to do more with Greek than introductory courses, any English-speaking student wanting a reference for the long-haul or other literary genres will have no choice but to invest in the Liddell & Scott intermediate dictionary (the “Baby Liddell”) or one of the other dictionaries that aimed to be a successor to that.

[Michael C · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good and well-laid out basic dictionary of ancient Greek, with tables for the principal parts of the more common irregular verbs, a section on proper names, a map of ancient Greece, a list of numerals, and a short English-to-Greek section. The latter is too short to be of huge value except perhaps for covering the range of vocabulary expected for exams in which translation from English is expected. The book is very comfortable to hold in the hands.

Those who want more than this will probably want to consider using one of the online dictionaries or a dictionary app like Logeion.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little puppy has saved me too many times.