 The dictionary was created in order to meet the need for a more modern Latin-English dictionary than Lewis & Short's "A Latin Dictionary" (1879), while being less ambitious in scope than the "Thesaurus Linguae Latinae" (in progress).It was based on a new reading of classical sources, in the light of the advances in lexicography in creating the Oxford English Dictionary.Although Lewis and Short's "Latin Dictionary" was widely used in the English world by the end of the nineteenth century, its faults were widely felt among classicists.