Cretan dialect has the privilege of presenting a written literary tradition from the 14th century, reaching its peak of expressiveness in the 16th and 17th centuries. The language of today's Cretans, despite the inevitable leveling tendencies that lead to the rapid decline of local idioms and dialectal varieties, retains a large part of its character.
The rich material of this dictionary is a valuable source of information and reflection, not only for researchers but also for every Cretan. Leafing through it, one realizes that a wonderful world passes in front of him, covering all aspects of the material, intellectual, and social life of the Cretans, the flora and fauna of the island, and so much more. It stops in admiration in front of plants and herbs; it is impressed by the rich pastoral vocabulary; it mourns the death of so many words; it remains amazed at the synonymic possibilities: The handsome in appearance is called "diomatáris," "theoretical," "fancy," "elegant." It is surprised by the multitude of inventive compounds, such as "ant-midwife," "playmate," "headache," "whisperer." Finally, it realizes the astonishing polysemy of words when it sees that in Crete a worker is a "factory component," dandruff is a "type of herb," a wild thistle is a "type of wild grass," or that small cookies are eaten because they are tasty "little paximádakia."
In an era when everything that is considered "marginal" or deviates from established linguistic behavior is in danger of disappearing, dictionaries like this one acquire national significance, as they awaken historical memories, depict various aspects of popular culture, while at the same time allowing the competent reader to penetrate through the words into the psyche of those Cretans who continue, despite the times, to speak a language that is rich and expressive, with an oral tradition of thousands of years.