María Moliner’s anniversary at the BNE The ‘Dictionary of Usage of the Spanish Language’

The National Library of Spain (Biblioteca Nacional de España, BNE) and the publishing house Gredos will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first-time publication of the ‘Dictionary of Usage of the Spanish Language’ ('Diccionario de uso del español'), by María Moliner. The celebration will take place March 1st, at 19:00, at the assembly hall of the institution.

«María Moliner achieved an almost unprecedented feat: she wrote by herself, at home, by hand, the most complete, most useful, most passionate and funniest dictionary of the Spanish language, twice as big as the one issued by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (Real Academia de la Lengua Española), and —in my opinion— more than twice as good,» , said Gabriel García Márquez about Moliner’s lifework.

María Moliner (Paniza, Zaragoza, 1900 - Madrid, 1981) graduated as a philologist and a lexicographer at the Estudio de Filología in Aragón. As a librarian, she was committed to her profession, and she pushed for the creation of a network of rural libraries. Around 1950 she began what would become her opus magnum, the Dictionary of Usage of the Spanish Language, with the goal of creating «an instrument for the guidance in the usage of the Spanish language, both for those who are native speakers and for those who are learning it.» She herself described in an interview the moment when she began working on it; it was in 1952: «One afternoon that I was home alone I grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper, and started a dictionary that I was planning to make into a brief one, good for about six months of work, and the thing has dragged on for fifteen years.» The task she carried out was a hard, almost colossal one, but her perseverance bore fruit, and in 1966 it saw its first edition, which received the faith and support of Dámaso Alonso, then head of the Romance Hispanic Library (Biblioteca Románica Hispánica) of the publishing house Gredos.

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