History Walks in Venice

The Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano by Giuseppe Boerio

The Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano — Dictionary of the Venetian Dialect — by Giuseppe Boerio from 1829 is the essential dictionary of the late Venetian language for anybody trying to read old Venetian texts.

While it claims to be a dictionary, when it comes to special Venetian terms, especially administrative and legal terms, it is more like an encyclopedia.

Giuseppe Boerio

Giuseppe Boerio was born in 1754 in the Polesine, part of the Venetian Dominio di Terra, close to Rovigo. His father worked for the Venetian administration of the dominion. Having finished his law studies in the mid 1770s, the Venetian Senate appointed Boerio to work with his father.

He worked in the administration of the Dominio di Terra until the end of the republic. In the mid-1780s he was in Verona, and in the early 1790s in Chioggia. During those assignments he made a series of compilations of administrative procedures and case law of the two reggimenti.

After the fall of the republic in 1797, he worked in tribunals in Venice under both the French and Austrian dominations, and published several procedural guides to trials under Austrian law. After 1815 he was a judge in criminal tribunals in Venice for almost fifteen years.

Boerio finished the manuscript for the Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano in 1821, but couldn’t find a publisher. The work consequently wasn’t printed until 1829.

Boerio died in 1832 shortly after retiring.¹

A second edition was published in 1857, and a third in 1867. Reprints of the 3rd edition are easy to find in Venetian book stores.

Digitised versions are available online: first edition from 1829, the second edition from 1856, and the third edition from 1867.