Thursday, November 14, 2013

Assignment 2 and Lewis & Short

In case anyone needs another copy, here is the second assignment.

I mention that you might want to consult Lewis & Short, which I have mentioned several times before in this blog and in class. In case you can't remember, it is a large dictionary that includes a fair number of later Latin authors through the fourth century or so. That makes it useful for reading later Latin. At the right-hand side of the blog, under "Useful links," you will find a link to the online version hosted by The Perseus Project.

Note that, using that version, you can search the entire text of the dictionary, not just the headwords. You have to be careful to make sure you're using the right fields, etc. If you click on the link, the page you are taken to should have four grey boxes at the right, titled "Dictionary Entry Lookup," "References," "Search," and "Display Preferences." You might need to play around with these to get familiar with them, but for the moment you should know that if  you use the "Dictionary Entry Lookup," and choose Latin for the "in" field, you will search both the full and abbreviated versions of Lewis & Short. You can use this search feature to find many inflected forms that you might be having attaching to a Latin headword. The "Search" field lets you search English definitions.

The Table of Contents field on the left lets you browse entries like you can do with hard copy and see what entries are near the one you are interested in. Sometimes they can help you find something that doesn't at first seem to be in the dictionary.