A. S. HORNBY

'Albert Sidney Hornby', usually just 'A. S. Hornby' (1898-1978) was an English grammarian, lexicographer and pioneer in the field of English language learning and teaching (ELT).
He was born in Chester, and educated at University College London. In April, 1924 he went to Japan to teach English at Oita University. He joined Harold E. Palmer in his programme of vocabulary research at IRET (the Institute for Research in English Teaching).　Palmer invited him to Tokyo in April, 1933 as an assistant. In 1936, he became the technical adviser and editor of the ''Bulletin'' at IRET. In 1937, with E. V. Gatenby and H. Wakefield he began work on a new type of dictionary that was aimed at foreign learners of English, the first monolingual learners' dictionary. It was completed in 1940 and published by Kaitakusha in 1942 in Tokyo as ''The Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary''. After Hornby had left Japan in 1939, he joined the British Council and after World War II he became the editor of the journal ''English Language Teaching''. In 1948 his dictionary was reissued by Oxford University Press as ''A Learner's Dictionary of Current English''. The subsequent, revised editions of the dictionary were and continue to be a great commercial success in ELT publishing. It is now in its seventh edition and is known as the ''Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary''.

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Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary