Words from Old Books

Books from a gentler age.

The high cost of running this site is supported by advertisements and donations. If you are seeing this text, you have JavaScript disabled or are running an ad blocker; that's fine, you are still very welcome here of course, but you might want to consider making a donation! Any amount of US$5 or more is OK; below that, the fees I pay mean it can end up a net loss. Thanks!

E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

Chalmers’ 1811-1818 Dictionary of Biography in 32 volumes.

Nathan Bailey’s 1737 Dictionary of Thieving Slang (canting, or cant) from the underworld

Charles Hutton’s 1795 Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary in 2 volumes.

Charles Thomas Jacobi’s 1888 Dictionary of printing terms

Charles Knight’s (1845) Old England, a Pictorial Museum

Charles Pigott’s 1795 Political Dictionary (a biting satire)

The Rev. James Wood’s 1907 Nuttall Encyclpædia

Francis Grose’ Provincial Glossary (incomplete)

Chas. T. Jacobi’s 1897 Gesta Typograhica (incomplete)

The texts on this site were processed with XML. More details.

See also www.fromoldbooks.org, our sister site, with hundreds and hundreds of antique images.

Thank you

FromOldBooksdotOrg is grateful for sponsorshpip from Dotcom-Monitor, Load View Testing, Web Hosting Buddy, Instructify, Driven Coffee, and Security Guard Training Central.

If you would like to help the site with a subscription, you can be added to this list by emailing slave at fromoldbooks dot org.

Script font is Origins by Laura Worthington; ornaments from P22 1722 by Ted Staunton; Cone of Silence font by doodle_lee_do, used by kind permission.

DO NOT TRY TO DOWNLOAD THIS SITE: ask first. There are multiple gigabytes.

Contact: mail slave at fromoldbooks dot org, mentioning the colour of your socks in the subject.