ABSTRACT
In the first half of the 17th century, however, monolingual dictionaries made their appearance in England and Germany, roughly at the same time. They are word lists of the language which the people of the region used anyway and which there was no need to learn.2 The question is what motivation can be found behind such enterprises and whether it is the same for German and English monolingual dictionaries. Such questions will (in due brevity) be raised and answered in this paper. The most important result will be that the motivation behind German and English dictionaries of the same period is quite different.
