Antônio Houaiss

Antônio Houaiss ( or ; October 15, 1915 – March 7, 1999) was a Brazilian lexicographer, diplomat, writer and translator.

Early life The son of Lebanese immigrants, he was born in Rio de Janeiro.

Career Houaiss began his career in Rio de Janeiro as a professor of the Portuguese language, of which he eventually became a recognized authority.

After leaving the diplomatic career he worked briefly as editor of the Brazilian newspaper Correio da Manhã (1964 to 1965). He joined the Brazilian Academy of Philology in 1960 and was elected a fellow of the exclusive Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1971, which he presided in 1996. He was the chief editor of the Brazilian encyclopedia Mirador. In 1990 he received the Moinho Santista Award. For 11 months, in 1992 and 1993, he served as the Minister of Culture under President Itamar Franco.

Published works He is the author of several books and many essays, commentaries and articles on linguistics and other subjects. He is best known for his 1966 translation of James Joyce's Ulysses, and for supervising with Mauro de Salles Villar the creation of the Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, one of the major reference dictionaries for the Portuguese language. The dictionary, which he started compiling in 1985, was completed and published (with more than 220,000 entries) only after his death, in 2001. The Antônio Houaiss Institute was created in 1997 to continue that work.