Work on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae began in 1894 and carries on to this day in a Bavarian palace in Munich, Germany. There's still a long way to go for a project with a soft deadline of 2050.

Latin Dictionary’s Journey: A to Zythum in 125 Years (and Counting) Researchers in Germany have been working on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae since the 1890s.

The final part of an epic dictionary of medieval Latin is to be published this week, bringing to a close a project initiated a century ago.

Even the Oxford English Dictionary is not immune from assuming that Latin abbreviations have self-evident meanings.