ABSTRACT
Within the history of English lexicography, bilingual word lists with
the language order Latin-English precede those with the order English-
Latin. Stein (1985) compared the two earliest English-Latin dictionaries,
the Promptorium parvulorum (1440) and the Catholicon Anglicum (1483) and
suggested that the overall organization of the Catholicon Anglicum seems
to be more geared towards the encoding language needs of the 15th-
century English person learning Latin than was the case with the Prompto
rium parvulorum. In the present article, this suggestion is taken up and de
veloped further by looking at the Catholicon Anglicum from learners' point
of view. It is shown that the compiler's strategies to meet the learners'
needs interestingly anticipate the pedagogical and lexicographical meth
ods that became commonplace in learners' dictionaries only several cen
turies later.
