“A special dictionary of phraseology: Duverger’s comparison between the Idioms, Genius and Phraseology of the French and English Languages (1810?)”,

William Duverger’s “Comparison between the Idioms, Genius and Phraseology of the French and the English languages” (1810?) is an interesting ‘pedagogical’ dictionary of ‘phraseology’ for encoding purposes addressed to English-speaking young ladies. It records English phraseological expressions and their equivalents in French. The author sets himself the task of showing “avec quels autres mots il [chaque mot] peut être placé”. The term ‘phraseology’ is indeed used in a rather ‘modern’ linguistic and lexicographic sense, since it refers to both grammatical and lexical collocations: for example “to be blind to”, “être aveugle où dans l’aveuglement sur”, as opposed to “to be blinded with, être aveuglé par”; or “an assuming blockhead”, “un sot plein d’orgueil et d’affectation”. The paper will illustrate the characteristics of this dictionary, with references to other lexicographical works and to French teaching methodology in early nineteenth century England.