This Estonian orthographic dictionary was compiled by linguist Elmar Muuk (1901–1941) who died in NKVD captivity after having fought against the Soviet invaders at the beginning of World War II. Editions appeared both during his lifetime (1–7) and posthumously (8–).
By the same author, there is also an Eesti õigekeelsussõnaraamat (ÕS, see also Wikipedia), which first appeared in 1923. The 2013 edition can be searched online at the Eesti Keele Instituut. This shorter (Väike) dictionary is commonly referred to as "VÕS". Its 1st edition appeared in 1933, the 5th in 1936, the 7th in 1940. The 8th edition was printed in Tartu in 1945 after the war, as approved by the Soviet state authorities, the price in rubles printed on the last page. According to the Libris catalog, Umeå university library in Sweden has a copy of a 9th edition printed in Stockholm in 1947 by an association of Estonians in exile. It could be interesting in the future to digitize several editions and compare them side by side.
A copy of the 8th edition was digitized in September 2015, page images scanned in 400 dpi JPEG. The typography uses a curved underscore character, known in Unicode as U+203F ‿ "undertie". During proofreading, it can be replaced by a normal underscore (_) without any risk for confusion.
Project Runeberg digitizes dictionaries like this one under the
assumption that they are not covered by copyright for 70 years, but
only by catalog or database rights for 15 years.
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