馬禮遜編纂的三大部字典（1815-1823）是十九世紀以來中外辭典史上首次成就。此前在歐洲大多為天主教傳教士抄本，且都是字詞的對譯與簡短的詞彙釋義；而馬禮遜則是以百科全書式的企圖在編纂，尤其表現在第一部第一卷。這些字例是理解其思想內涵的重要文獻，然而過去大多著力於辭典學及字彙考古研究，且偏重在第二、三部。為更加釐清馬禮遜編纂第一部時利用各類中國典籍的方法，並凸顯他在挑選、翻譯與編寫時的思考歷程，本文分兩大部分加以解析：第一部分說明《字典》的輯譯過程，以及編製字例的兩種典型；第二部分舉例說明馬禮遜取材的特點，以及他對中國文學的研讀經歷與理解。

Robert Morrison’s Dictionary of the Chinese Language in Three Parts (1815-1823) opened new phase to the nineteenth-century Chinese-English lexicography. Before the Dictionary has been published, European Chinese language learners often made use of manuscripts transcribed from the Catholic missionaries’, in which all the vocabularies were simply literally translated and paraphrased only without further explainations. Morrison took another way by compiling a dictionary on an encyclopedic scale, which is obviously represented in the first volume of the first part. These partially original entries are important sources to a better understanding of Morrison’s thought and work, but it has been mostly overlooked by emphasizing the lexicographical and historical value of the second and third parts. To look into his process of selecting, translating, and integrating various kind of sources into each entry, this paper first demonstrates two typical modes of entry-making in the Dictionary, and then explains how he chose materials, with a view on his experiences of studying and understanding Chinese Literature.