Patrick Stephen Dinneen (Irish: Pádraig Ua Duinnín), an Irish lexicographer, historian and a leading figure in the Gaelic revival, dies in Dublin on September 29, 1934.

Dinneen is born near Rathmore, County Kerry on December 25, 1860, the fifth of ten children of Maitiú Ó Duinnín, farmer and livestock trader, and Máire Ní Dhonnchadha. He is educated at Shrone and Meentogues National Schools and at St. Brendan’s College in Killarney. He earns second class honours bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Royal University of Ireland. The BA (1885) is in classics and mathematical science, the MA (1889) is in mathematical science. He joins the Society of Jesus in 1880 and is ordained a priest in 1894, but leaves the order in 1900 to devote his life to the study of the Irish language while still remaining a priest. After his ordination, he teaches Irish, English, classics, and mathematics in three different Jesuit colleges, including Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare.

Dinneen is a leading figure in the Irish Texts Society, publishing editions of Geoffrey Keating‘s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, poems by Aogán Ó Rathaille, Piaras Feiritéar, Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin, and other poets. He also writes a novel and a play in Irish, and translates such works as Charles Dickens‘s A Christmas Carol into Irish. His best known work, however, is his Irish–English dictionary, Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla, which is first published in 1904. The stock and plates of the dictionary are destroyed during the Easter Rising of 1916, so Dinneen takes the opportunity to expand the dictionary. A much larger second edition, compiled with the assistance of Liam S. Gógan, is published in 1927. His request to the Irish Texts Society to include Gogan’s name on the title page is refused. Gogan continues to work on the collection of words up to his death in 1979. This complementary dictionary is published online in 2011.

Dinneen dies in Dublin at the age of 73 on September 29, 1934, and, following a funeral Mass in the Jesuits’ Gardiner Street church, is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

(Pictured: Portrait of Patrick S. Dinneen, oil on canvas by John Butler Yeats, National Gallery of Ireland)