Quemada got me interested in early dictionaries and for my doctoral thesis I undertook a study of the dictionaries of the period of the French Renaissance. The diagram shows an analysis of the structures of components of Jean Nicot's Thresor de la langue françoyse (1606). At one time Nicot was a member of the King's court and for two years was the French Ambassador to Portugal. During his time there he sent back to the French Queen samples of the tobacco plant. It is to Jean Nicot that we owe the words nicotine and nicotiana.

I defended my thesis in Paris, and set off across the Atlantic, sailing in the Empress of England from Liverpool to Montreal, to take up a post at the University of Toronto in the French Department at University College.