Book Description

Horace G. Lunt's Concise Dictionary of Old Russian is a "bridge" dictionary spanning the lexical territory between Old Church Slavic and Modern Russian. For all its 40-plus years, it remains the best available short dictionary (some 5,500 entries) for providing access to some seven centuries of Russian literary production, including especially the standard texts that are read in courses covering the medieval period of the 11th-14th centuries. The Concise Dictionary of Old Russian is particularly strong in providing explications for words connected to Old and Middle Russian material and spiritual culture, especially ecclesiastical words, rhetorical terms, and items of foreign origin. Additionally, it is valuable for providing meanings for words that still exist in modern Russian but that have undergone significant semantic change or specialization.