Dictionary

The Chorasmian Online project also hosts an online dictionary of the Chorasmian language.

A Chorasmian dictionary has been a desideratum, and something of a phantom, in Iranian philology for many decades. At the time of his death in 1967, Walter B. Henning had been preparing a dictionary. He had only completed a small part: 260 entries from ʾ to ʾkw, which was edited for posthumous publication in 1971 as A Fragment of a Khwarezmian Dictionary. About the same time, David N. MacKenzie had turned to the study of Chorasmian, and, as can be seen from the bibliography on this site, is almost singlehandedly responsible for the modern edition and philological analysis of Chorasmian texts. His major goal was a complete dictionary, for which he had prepared numerous materials including index cards and computer files. He too died, in 2001, before being able to complete his dictionary, leaving behind various materials including a draft printout totalling 1888 entries from ʾ to γwc-. His remaining materials allow for the completion of the dictionary.

For an overview of the history of work on a Chorasmian dictionary, see the ‘Towards a Chorasmian Dictionary’ series of posts on this site:

Part 1: Henning | Part 2: Benzing | Part 3: MacKenzie | Part 4: Goals and Materials


The Chorasmian Online project has partnered with ORACC to develop an online, open-acess, version of the Chorasmian dictionary, beginning with MacKenzie’s materials and proceeding until the completion of all lemmas.

To access the “beta” version of the dictionary, click here.