Elisha Coles

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Elisha Coles (ca 1608 - 1688) was a 17th century English lexicographer and stenographer, chorister of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1658-61; teacher of Latin and English in London, 1663; usher of Merchant Taylors School, 1677; master of Galway school, 1678.

He published devotional verses, 1671, a treatise on shorthand, 1674, primers of English and Latin, 1674-5, an English dictionary, 1676, and a Latin dictionary, 1677.

His 1676 Dictionary contains

"many words and phrases that belong to our English Dialects in our several Counties, and where the particular Shire is not exprest, the distinction (according to the use) is more general into North and South-Country words."

Coles' dialectal entries are mostly collected from the glossary by John Ray with some additions from the Dictionarium Rusticum in John Worlidge's 1669 Systema Agriculturae.

[edit] Works

A Practical Discourse of God's Sovereignty
Christologia, Or, A Metrical Paraphrase on the History of Our Lord (1671)[1]
The Compleat English Schoolmaster (1674)
Nolens Volens, Or, You Shall Make Latin Whether You Will Or No
A Dictionary, English-Latin and Latin English [2]
An English Dictionary: Explaining the Difficult Terms that are used in Divinity, Husbandry, Physick, Phylosophy , Law, Navigation, Mathematicks, and Other Arts and Sciences (1676) [3]
Syncrisis, Or, The Most Natural and Easie Method of Learning Latin (1677)
Of Perseverance