A case for ‘ European ’ Dictionaries 1

The author, an historian of political ideas, makes the case for multilingual, ‘European’ dictionaries, which should replace the current, bilingual dictionaries. While these are the product of a ‘Europe of nations’, the multilingual dictionaries from a historical point of view prove that European history is a unified entity, while, from a political point of view, they aim to render more complete the consciousness of such a unity, and to create a more ‘common’ civilization. In the second part of the paper a number of entries in the OED are closely scrutinized, reaching the conclusion that often they do not give due attention to Greek and Latin sources, thus abandoning, slowly but inexorably, the roots of our civilization.