Abigail Lindo

Abigail Lindo (3 August 1803 – 28 August 1848) was a British lexicographer. She was the first British Jew to compile a Hebrew-English dictionary and is considered to be the only woman to have made a significant contribution to philology in the nineteenth century.

Life

Lindo was born in London in 1803, Sephardi Jews who were members of leading families. She had seventeen siblings; her sister Jemima was the mother of the barrister and Jewish community leader David Lindo Alexander. One of Abigail's cousins was Sir Moses Montefiore. The Lindo family were related to Benjamin Disraeli and it was her father who performed Disraeli's circumcision.

Her mother's brother, Moses Mocatta (1768–1857), who was a bullion broker and a scholar of Hebrew language and literature, saw to her education. Under his guidance, she became a respected scholar of the Bible with a wide knowledge of Hebrew. and recommended it to be used in the different Jewish schools in Britain.

Her 1837 vocabulary was extended in 1842 and by 1846 she had created a complete A Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew Dictionary. Leading lexicographers used her book as well as students of Hebrew.