Coles (Elisha) An English Dictionary, explaining The Difficult Terms that are used in Divinity, Husbandry, Physick, Philosophy, Law, Navigation, Mathematicks, and other Arts and Sciences. Containing many thousand of hard words (and Proper Names of places) more than are in any other English Dictionary or Expositor: together with the etymological derivation of them from their Proper Fountains, whether, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, or any other Language. In a Method more Comprehensive than any that is Extant. By E. Coles, Schoolmaster, and Teacher of the Tongue to Foreigners, London, F. Collins 1713
In 1676, Elisha Coles, c.1640-1680, issued his English Dictionary with brief and generally adequate definitions of around 25,000 words, with some dialect (extracted from John Ray's Collection of English Words not Generally used, 1674) identified by county of use. It was the last of the 'hard word' dictionaries, including translations of foreign words, primarily Greek and Latin. For these traditional entries he relied heavily on The New World of English Words published in 1658 by Edward Phillips, who in turn had plagiarized Thomas Blount's Glossographia of 1656. However, there was an important innovation in that it was the first general English dictionary to include 'canting terms', or criminal slang or flash talk (from Richard Head's The Canting Academy, 1673).