A new edition with a new preface & critical notes throughout, especially comparing Malthus's first edition to the Cazenove edition of 1853. Includes John Ramsay McCulloch’s review of Definitions in Political Economy from The Scotsman (1827).

A detailed examination of the sources of Chambers’s article on definition in his Cyclopaedia of 1728. Because Chambers's article was the basis for the corresponding article on définition in Diderot’s Encyclopédie, this work expands our knowledge of the sources of the Enlightenment.

Copyright @ Berkeley Bridge Press. All rights reserved.

Gordon’s remarkably wide-ranging essay surveys the scope of the study of words and language, ranging from the ancient Greeks through Ireland’s Easter Rising and the origins of the phrase sinn fein. Prepared especially for students, with copious footnotes and an index of names.

resources for metalexicography and orismology, the study of definitions

Berkeley Bridge Press

Praxis & Lexicography

Practical guidance for writers & editors of glossaries & other specialized dictionaries—as well as legislation, architectures, ontologies, and data dictionaries—to craft useful products with necessary and sufficient entries & consistent definitional claims. For related services, write to us at glossaries @ BerkeleyBridgePress.com.


Alexander K Bocast. Guidance for Glossarists: A Manual of Specialized Lexicography for American Practice

Under development. Inspired by Bergenholtz and Tarp’s Manual of Specialised Lexicography.


Studies in Metalexicography 

Critical analyses & deconstruction of definitions. Many definitional claims fail when initially committed to text; such claims typically exhibit a variety of anomalies at different levels of analysis. We identify & diagnose definitional errors, and we suggest ways to resolve structural, semantic, logical, ontological, legal, and other issues. For related services, write to us at definitions @ BerkeleyBridgePress.com.


Analysis of Definitions: Basic Concepts. Studies, Vol. 1 No. 1.

Analysis of Definitions: Case Studies.Studies, Vol. 1 No 2.

Definitions of ‘Vessel’ and ‘Vehicle’: History, Analyses, and UseStudies, Vol. 2 No. 1.

Our book list:


Alexander K Bocast, Chambers on Definition.
​ISBN: 978-1-945208-00-3.





​Thomas Robert Malthus. Definitions in Political Economy
ISBN: 978-1-945208-01-0. 




John William Gordon. The English Dictionary.

ISBN: 978-1-945208-02-7.   







Berkeley Bridge Classics

New editions of out-of-print (and out-of-copyright) classical works. We also translate into English, sometimes for the first time, foundational European authors for American readers.

Note carefully that we do not reprint nor do we reproduce scanned PDF pages in our  series of classics. We publish wholly new editions.


Enlightenment Views of Definition

An examination of writings on definition, with a focus on texts that appeared between 1660 and 1820, and organized around seminal articles in Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1728), Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1754), and Gergonne’s “Theory of Definition” (1818). 


Enlightenment Views of Definition :

Volume 1 : Definition in Chambers’s Cyclopaedia.
Part 1 : Chambers on Definition. 
Part 2 : Chambers’s Circle of Knowledge for Definition.
Part 3 : Chambers’s Sources and Related Texts.
Volume 2 : Definition in Diderot’s Encyclopédie
Volume 3 : Definition in Gergonne’s “Theory of Definition.”


Defining Definition

An historical anthology of definitions of definition and other discussions of definition in logic, rhetoric, and lexicography, from Plato through Murray’s New English Dictionary, including work in English, French, Latin, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Defining Definition : 

Volume 1 : Plato through the Sixteenth Century

Volume 2 : The Seventeenth Century

Volume 3 : The Eighteenth Century

Volume 4 : The Nineteenth Century