C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806)
Adelung, Johann Christoph (ä’de-löng). An eminent German philologist and lexicographer; born at Spantekow, Aug. 8, 1732; died in Dresden, Sept. 10, 1806. His life was devoted to an exhaustive investigation of his native language, which he traced to its remotest origins with a patience and a thoroughness that have remained unsurpassed. Before the Grimms, the principal student of the German language, the results of his studies appearing in ‘A Grammatical and Critical Dictionary of the High German Tongue’ (1774–86). His ‘Mithridates,’ a work intended to illustrate all living languages, is only partly completed. He was the author of several useful textbooks.