Glossing vs. intra-text interpretation of lexicon: terminological common grounds in case of the texts of the 18th century

The intra-text interpretation of lexicon in the 18th century texts inevitably needs a terminological designation of this phenomenon. There are two opposing directions in the use or non-use of the term “gloss” by the description of these cases of the explanation of lexicon. The tradition of understanding a gloss as a way of explaining some words, especially in hand-written texts, relies on the definition of a gloss which goes back to antiquity. This way glossing becomes the integral element of hand-written tradition, and glosses of hand-written texts become an important source of historical studying of language. In this case the problem of glossing is studied only using the material of hand-written texts. Other researchers understand glossing widely as the interpretation of unknown or little-used words and expressions made not only by hand in the manuscript, but also by the typographical way in the texts of printed books, carrying such explanations to the most widespread type of explanations of lexicon in texts of later time, including the texts of the 18th century. It basically appears to consider an assumption as a gloss by any explanation introduced in the text, whether it is handwritten or printed. Therefore, in case of entering the explanations to the “difficult” words into the printed texts of the 18th century we can talk not just about the existence of glosses in the text, but about glossing as a process in general.