Diccionarios históricos

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to answer the question “What is a historical dictionary?”, and to present a select set of lexicons referring to the Spanish language, published in the Hispanic area, and chosen with linguistic or scientific criteria, that can be classified as historical dictionaries of Spanish. The history of European general historical dictionaries (German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Italian, Catalan, and Spanish) is reviewed first, and then the present situation of historical dictionaries in the Spanishspeaking world (in Europe and America) is studied, reviewing both general and segmental compilations. Finally, it offers a perspective of the future, listing the challenges that historical lexicography faces at the beginning of the 21st century.