PEDRO ÁLVAREZ DE MIRANDA AND CHASING THE SUN

Dr. Pedro Álvarez de Miranda (Royal Spanish Academy, RAE) has been kind enough to forward a very interesting article of his, "Dos efemérides", published recently in El Cultural (18 June 2026). He discusses the magnificent Diccionario de autoridades (1726–1739), which predates Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary by sixteen years.

The article is well worth reading, both for its intrinsic interest and for the light it sheds on the importance of the Diccionario de autoridades in the history of European lexicography. In his Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made (1996), Jonathon Green made little mention of these early Spanish contributions, including the Diccionario de autoridades, which marked a cusp in the history of dictionary making. Dr. Álvarez de Miranda writes with considerable scholarly authority and gravitas, and succeeds in whetting the reader's appetite for language and its history.