Lexicography and gender - gender-specific exclusion in historical and contemporary dictionaries

Dictionaries have always been an important part in shaping our construction of the world and its language(s), also as concerns the concepts and presentation of gender. In this regard, dictionaries can be means of exclusion in terms of gender. This contribution examines a number of historical and contemporary German general-language dictionaries (print and online) to find out about gender concepts and attributions that have been made in the German lexicographic tradition from the 16(th) to the 21(st) century. Among others, it deals with the specific contextualization of gender constructs with regard to potentially communicative ingroup/outgroup relations in historical lexicography and poses the question if and how gender-specific stereotyping can be overcome in contemporary lexicography.