Modern Hebrew

The present chapter chronicles a mainly external history of the lexicography of Modern Hebrew. It focuses on the most important general monolingual, bi- and trilingual, learners’, and online dictionaries whose source language is this latest phase of the Hebrew language; rather than surveying all the bilingual and trilingual dictionaries with Hebrew as a source language, it discusses Hebrew–Russian and Hebrew–English dictionaries because of the historical and practical importance of these two target languages for Modern Hebrew. In accordance with, for example, the judgement of Uzzi Ornan, the beginning of Modern Hebrew is set in the 1880s, when Hebrew marked a true turning point sociolinguistically – hence, also linguistically – by starting to be used as a spoken language and to fulfil other functions of a modern society in Palestine and, later, in the State of Israel. The preceding period, from the end of the eighteenth century, when Modern Hebrew literature started, until around 1880, is not, therefore, treated here.