The Etymological Dictionary of the Old Church Slavonic Language is the only completed etymological dictionary of the oldest Slavic literary language. In 2,500 entries, it provides explanations of the origins of Old Church Slavonic words lexicographically processed in the Old Church Slavonic Dictionary. It places Old Church Slavonic vocabulary within the context of all Slavic languages and explains not only the words but also the material and cultural realities of the ancient Slavs. It also shows how the Old Church Slavonic lexicon was enriched by borrowings from cultural languages, especially Greek. Individual entries contain grammatical characteristics, derivatives of the word being explained and its presence in compounds, indicating its morphological and semantic development; the etymological part of the entry lists equivalents from other Slavic languages and provides etymological explanations.
The digital version of the the Etymological Dictionary of Old Church Slavonic Language is based on the printed edition of this dictionary, which was published in 21 volumes between 1989 and 2022 (editors-in-chief Eva Havlová, Adolf Erhart, Ilona Janyšková, Prague: Academia / Brno: Tribun EU). In the electronic edition, the cited material from all languages has been completely revised. Old Church Slavonic material has been supplemented on the basis of previously published additions to the Old Church Slavonic Dictionary. Etymological explanations have been left in their original form, except for corrections of obvious errors.
The Etymological Dictionary of the Old Church Slavonic Language is available using the advanced Gulliver presentation environment (developed by the company AiP Beroun). This environment includes also the Old Church Slavonic Dictionary, the Dictionary of the Oldest Old Church Slavonic Manuscripts and the Greek-Old Church Slavonic Index (Volume I). This enables advanced search and filtering features, as well as creating and managing user’s collections across integrated dictionaries.
The dictionary entries are hyperlinked to related entries in the same dictionary and to entries in the digital Old Church Slavonic Dictionary. From the cited Greek equivalents or sources of Old Church Slavonic loanwords it is also possible to access digitized entries in the hitherto published parts of the Greek-Old Church Slavonic Index.
