This book unfolds chronologically, comprehensively and coherently, for the first time and under one cover, a spectacular landscape of how lexicographies of core native-speaker varieties of English (other than British English) originate and develop, directly or indirectly, from their British roots to current shapes and prosperity, tracing their evolutional links with and inheritance from British (occasionally American) lexicographical tradition, their interrelation to socio-cultural settings, as well as their reformation and divergences through innovation and self-expansion.

This pioneering work gives special focus to many unknown aspects and areas of world English lexicography and concludes with visions, prospects and possible transformations of its development in the 21st century. It is the first attempt to go beyond the traditional confines of ontological studies in the history of lexicography, integrating sociolinguistic and lexicographical approaches and setting the diachronic explorations of world English lexicography against the broad background of socio-cultural observations. It is the most updated and wide-ranging on the subject treated within a unified framework of English dictionary paradigms going from its archetype to the prescriptive, to the historical, to the descriptive and to the cognitive model.