GLOSS, GLOSSARY. A gloss is a note -wended to any word or phrase for the purpose 3f interpretation or illustration. Sacred glosses are inch notes appended to words or phrases occurring in the Scriptures. A glossary is a collection of such explanatory notes properly arranged.
The word gloss is borrowed from the Greek lailio-cra. But in the sense above explained, it has no support from classical usage. The process, however, by which the word passed from its original meaning to that in which it was used by medival writers, and in which it is now used, may be traced. The Greek word i.A6.3crcra, meaning tongue or speech, came to be used by the Greek grammarians in the sense of a word requiring to be explained. In process of time, words often be come obsolete, or come to be used in senses different from those in which they were originally used; new words are introduced; and words have frequently special meanings attached to them of a professional or technical character, familiar only to a portion of the oommunity. To the multitude, such words need to be explained ; -and such words the Greek grammarians called -yX6:/cro-cu. Thus Plutarch speaks of certain expressions in the poets which were not commonly understood, and which belonged to the idiotisms of particular regions or tribes, as rets Neyop.evar -yXuirrcis (De audiend. pet. c. 6). Galen applies the same name to the anti quated words of Hippocrates, and explains the term thus :-5cm robmv rio'p Opodudi-cop rois irciXat xpavois 171.17,071 0131C l'71 6771, ra, uep roialira 7X60-0-as KaXofiat (Exeges. Gloss. Hippocrat. Proem.) Aristotle applies the same term to pro vincialisms (De arte pet. c. xxi., sec. 4-6; xxii. 3, 4, etc.) And, not to multiply quotations, a scholiast on Dion. Halicarn., quoted by Wetstein on 1 Con xii. to, expressly says 7XcLaaas gfuovar apxedous Kai Coro,Eviira.lpour brox(opta i-owicras (?). Quintilian also says of the synonymous word g-lossemata, ` id est voces minus usitatas ' (Instil. Orat. i. 8, ; comp. also i. 35).
The next step was from calling a word needing explanation a gloss, to apply this term to the explanation itself These explanations at first consisted merely in adhibiting the word in common use (boya Aristot.) to the obsolete and
peculiar word; and thus the two viewed as one whole came to be called a gloss; and ultimately this name came to be given to that part which was of most interest to the reader, viz., the explana tion.
These explanations constituted the beginnings of Greek Lexicography. They did not continue, however, to be merely lexical ; they often em braced historical, geographical, biographical, and such like notices. Nor were they arranged at first in an alphabetical order ; nor did they embrace the whole range of the language, but only such parts of it as the glossographer was interested in (hence such works as the ' ArriKal "'Micro-at of Theodorus, etc.), nor were the words presented in their uninflected forms, but in the form in which they occurred in the course of the glossographer's reading. More methodical collections of these explanations began to be made in the middle ages, and such as have been preserved to us in the works of Hesychius, Suidas, Phavorinus, Zonaras, Photius, etc.
The extant Scriptural glosses comprise two dis tinct classes. 1. The first of these consists of explanations drawn from the Greek glossarists, a large number of the notes collected by whom are on words occurring in Scripture. Their works thus become valuable as exegetical aids, especially as they convey not the individual opinion of the collector so much as opinions which he had gathered from older writers. A Glosrarium Gra, CUM in N. T., collected from these works, was published by Alberti in 1735. Valcknaer collected from Hesychius the explanations of scriptural words (opp. 1. 173, ff.); but this has been hest done by J. Ch. ,Gottl. Emesti, in his Glossa Sacra Hesychii Grace, etc., Lips. 17854 which was followed by a similar collection from Suidas and Phavorinus, with specimens from the Etymologicum Magnum, Lips. 1786. These are extremely convenient books of reference. Comp. Fabricius, Bib/. Graca, iv. 540, ff.; Rosenmiiller, .Histor. .Inttupr. iv. 356, ff.