Borrowing foreign plants, borrowing foreign names: medical, pharmaceutical, commercial issues in Late Modern English

Aim. The general aim of the present study is an investigation on the impact botanical terminology had on the English language from the 1740s to the end of the century, with reference to the degree of inclusion in medical dictionaries, to lexicalization processes, and to encyclopaedic treatment. Sources. The analysis of botanical terminology in late 18th-century lexicographic works mainly focuses on James’s A Medicinal dictionary (1743-45; 3 voll., 3327 in-folio pages), Barrow’s Dictionarium Medicum (1749; 1 vol., 591 in-8° pages), Motherby’s A New Medical Dictionary (1775; 1 vol., 610 in-folio pages), and Hooper’s A compendious Medical Dictionary (1798; 1 vol., 308 in-12° pages). As regards commercial issues, the following dictionaries have been used for sample comparison of selected terms: Rolt’s A New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1756; 1 vol., 926 in-folio pages), and Postlethwayt’s The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1757; 2 voll., 1967 in-folio pages). Universal dictionaries of arts and sciences and dictionaries of the English language are also relevant for the study. Method and Sampling. Method and sampling strictly depends 1. on the nature of the works under scrutiny (medical and commercial dictionaries, and their encyclopaedic perspective); 2. on their size (in-folio, in-8°, in-12°; nr of volumes per single work; total number of pages per single work, from about 3300 in-folio pages to about 300 in-12°), and 3. on the specific focus of botanical terminology (degree of inclusion in medical dictionaries, medical issues, structure and features of individual entries, commercial issues/economic botany). Due to clear differences in size among sources and, as a consequence, to the complexity in selecting a balanced and reliable corpus of examples (quantity and quality), many parameters/criteria need to be considered and combined in this specific investigation (cfr. Bukovska 2010 and 2013; Nation 1993; Thorndike 1924). General results and Discussion. By matching the results of the quantitative analysis, it emerges that after letter A, the number of entries per page increases. As a consequence, the length and complexity of single entries decrease, focusing on more concise and essential information (but still and strictly depending on the nature of the single work). Clear differences in the degree of inclusion under A shift towards more similar patterns in H, I-J, P across dictionaries. Small dictionaries (Barrow’s and Hooper’s) are more balanced in the distribution of items per page, and pages per letter. There is a high degree of correspondence between James’s and Motherby’s wordlists, a clear reduction in Barrow’s and Hooper’s (particularly under A). From letter H onwards, James’s and Barrow’s lemmata tend to overlap, or to display many similarities. Hooper’s is the most diverse among the four medical dictionaries under scrutiny. These concluding remarks are limited but reliable for the sections analysed. They cannot be considered exhaustive for single works as a whole, further research is needed. However, this partial but thorough analysis may suggest some general trends.