Cawdrey intended his dictionary to be used by those who might not understand words “which they shall heare or read in Scriptures, Sermons or elsewhere.” This was not a book for scholars. It was a book for the gentlefolk and for intellectually ambitious people to catalogue new words and to explain the new ideas connected with those words. The English population was growing, and growing more educated. One estimate is that by 1600, half of the three and a half million population — at least in towns and cities — had some minimal education in reading and writing. Their minds were hungry, wanting to
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