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Zoëga's A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic
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Preface Page 2
for the most part been omitted, as well as a number of compounds occurring only in legal, theological, or technical works. The line has not been very strictly drawn, however, and in doubtful cases insertion has been preferred to omission, especially where space readily admitted of this course. In the English renderings of the Icelandic words it has usually been possible to follow the larger work, but changes have been freely made wherever they seemed to be required. To make the precise meaning of the word still more evident, a short phrase or sentence has frequently been inserted after the English equivalent, and the student will find the usefulness of these illustrations increase as his knowledge of the language improves. The more difficult examples have been translated, entirely or in part, especially those illustrating the idiomatic uses of common verbs, which even in a concise dictionary must be treated with considerable fullness.
The arrangement of the larger dictionary has on the whole been followed, but a few changes have been introduced. The most important of these are the insertion of genitive compounds in their alphabetical places instead of under the simple word (e.g. alda-, aldar- on p. 7 instead of under öld on p. 528), and the separation of æ from œ. Although these vowels were confused in Icelandic from an early date, and editions of old texts printed in Iceland usually employ æ only, the distinction has much value for etymology and for the study of the other Scandinavian tongues. The vowel ø has also been distinguished from ö (for which many editions use the more original o¸), but without separation of the words containing them. In the reflexive forms of verbs the later -st has been used instead of the early -sk; the student must note, however, that in many editions the intermediate -z is employed. For purely philological purposes a different procedure would in some points have been advisable, but the dictionary is intended in the first place to assist in reading the Icelandic sagas as they appear in the most accessible editions.
For the convenience of beginners the tables of declensions and conjugations, and the lists of irregular forms, are reprinted (with some
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