# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S370
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

370 Lutheran Theological Pastor's Library.

not counted, in very compressed print; to which are further added 85 pages
for biographies.)

A complete dictionary of the German language, one that should be lacking
from no pastor's library, is the following: "Concise Comprehensive
Dictionary of the German Language, by Root- and Sense-Affinity, from All Its
Dialects and with All Foreign Words, by Jakob Heinrich Kaltschmidt,
Professor. Leipzig, by Tauchnitz. 1834." 4to. It is, as the fuller title
states, "a household treasury of the mother tongue for every rank of the
German people, wherein, besides all the simple and compound words of the
High German literary language, are also recorded and explained, in
correctly written form, all the words lacking to it from the Low German —
that is, the Westphalian, Bremen, Hamburg, Holstein, Ditmarsh,
Mecklenburg, Pomeranian, Livonian, and Estonian — dialects, and the words
of the South German — that is, the Bavarian, Swabian, Swiss, and Austrian —
dialects." Admittedly, one will not find in this lexicon any definitions,
nor any etymological, syntactic, or stylistic investigations and
compilations of that sort; nonetheless it is a work useful to a high
degree. It contains not only the whole immense treasury of German words in
every dialect of the German tongue and all foreign words in use, but also
the shortest and surest manner of explaining them, in that to the unknown
or unintelligible word are added several intelligible and familiar ones,
and, for a word applied in various senses, as many synonymous — that is,
identically or similarly meaning — words (synonyms) as possible are
appended, so that everyone who does not understand a word may, among the
synonyms standing beside it, find one more familiar or intelligible to him
and thereby come to understand the former. The root-related words stand
foremost among the explanatory words, and before even these, at the root
words, the old South German spelling, as it was written a thousand years
ago (in Gothic script). A few examples may make the matter clear:

Schlag (slag), plural Schläge: the striking, the blow, the knock, the
stroke, the lash; the kind, the species, sort; the coiling, the wrapping of
a rope; the turning aside; the skill, dexterity, the knack; the shivering,
the lurking; the seizure, apoplectic stroke, apoplexy, paralysis; the
misfortune; the defeat; the turnpike, the trapdoor, the coach door; the
felling, a division of forest and dike; the millrace channel; the thrust of
a wild boar; the beat, the tempo; a measure of length and of area; a row

*) That, besides the Walch work indicated, a more recent so-called
Conversations-Lexicon can hardly be dispensed with by a pastor, or at
least can render excellent service in many respects, surely needs no
mention. In our experience, the Brockhaus Encyclopedia deserves the
preference over all others, despite the wretched treatment of precisely
the theological articles.