Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages

The dictionary was conceived in the 1950s with the inadequacy of the existing Slavic etymological dictionaries in mind.^[1] Since 1961 the preparations began for the dictionary under the direction of Oleg Trubachev at the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the USSR.^[2] In 1963 a trial edition of the dictionary was published.^[3] Since its inception, the dictionary has been published by the Department of Etymology and Onomastics of the Russian Language Institute.

The Editor-In-Chief in the period 1974—2002 was Oleg Trubachev. Trubachev died in 2002, at which point the role was taken up by Anatoly Zhuravlyov [ru]. Zhuravlev was the editor until vol. 40 (2016), which was co-edited by him and Zhanna Varbot [ru], who has continued editing the following volumes.

For every Proto-Slavic reconstruction an etymology is given, as well as the history of etymological research. Reflexes in all Slavic languages are listed, and so are the cognates in other Indo-European languages. Proto-Slavic accent and accentual paradigm is not reconstructed. Elements of Proto-Slavic morphology (affixes, desinences) are also not reconstructed. Over 2100 journals and books have been used while writing the published volumes of the dictionary.^[4] The complete dictionary is estimated to contain around 20 000 words.^[5]