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Dictionaries

Even if you are already familiar with Spanish in a modern sense, in reading historical documents you will find a lot of archaic language and unfamiliar vocabulary. In addition to that, meanings of words can shift over time to be entirely different than their historic meanings. To this purpose, attached are a few dictionaries that you will find useful in finding historic or modern meanings of the vocabulary you encounter.

For a good modern searchable dictionary (in Spanish), you can try using the Diccionario de la lengua española, which can be found here: https://dle.rae.es/

The first Spanish-English dictionary, Bibliotheca Hispanica, was published in 1591 and provides a good view of historical meanings of Spanish words in 16th century English and can be found here: https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_bibliotheca-hispanica_percyvall-pichard_1591/mode/2up

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