Unfamiliar Acquaintances: What Else Can Dictionaries Tell Us? Vocabulary is considered to be first and foremost a linguistic and pedagogical field: it teaches readers to master the lexical units of their own or a foreign language better. Dictionaries are thus usually a kind of “applied" lexicology. However, a different approach is also possible, in which particular attention should be paid to clarifying the author's attitudes — not only philological, but also, more broadly, epistemological, taking also into account his views on the role of lexicographer (often extending far beyond his study). A dictionary is a special type of statements about words and the world, and the body of texts belonging to this type of discourse is an archive of knowledge (M. Foucault), shedding light not only on the history of words, but also on the history of the formation and development of concepts and ideas, on the history of society and on historical anthropology.