The Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes (1786-1793) by the Jesuit Esteban de Terreros y Pando is a work of great importance for Spanish lexicography, not only to fill in a void left by the Academy in the field of speciality voices, but also for the particular orthographic system proposed for the composition of the work. His ideas regarding the orthographic matter were based, as he mentioned in the prologue of his dictionary, on strictly phonetic criteria. Therefore, he distanced himself from the doctrine used in the Diccionario de autoridades which followed an etymological principle. Both proposals, even though they were thought out for the composition and use of the dictionary, were trying to solve the problem caused by the lack of a unitary norm of orthography in the Spanish territory. In this sense, the aim of the present study is to analyse Terreros’s orthographic system and to verify the extent of its application in his dictionary. In particular, the representation of the written form of the voiceless velar fricative /x/ is reviewed, one of the most relevant and innovative reforms found in his orthography.

Código UNESCO / UNESCO Nomenclature: 550614, 570511