Antonio de Alcedo (1755–1812) was a soldier and scholar.
Born at Quito (Ecuador), 1755, where his father was President of the Real Audiencia de Quito from 1728 to 1737. He selected the military career, and rose to the rank of Brigadier General in 1792, in the Spanish army. He wrote a dictionary, historical and geographical, of the Novohispanic New World possessions, entitled Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales ó América: es á saber: de los reynos del Perú, Nueva España, Tierra Firme, Chile, y Nuevo reyno de Granada. The work was published at Madrid and issued in five volumes from 1786 to 1789. The earlier work of Father Giovanni Coletti, S.J., "Dizionario del l'America meridionale" (Venice, 1771) was a substantial basis.
The work of Alcedo was translated into English by G. A. Thompson in 1812, and that translation is looked upon by many as an improvement, whereas it in fact teems with errors from which the original is relatively free.