Elisha Coles (c. 1640 – 1680) was a 17th-century English lexicographer and stenographer.
He was son of John Coles, schoolmaster of Wolverhampton, and nephew of Elisha Coles the religious author. He became chorister of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1658–61; teacher of Latin and English in London, 1663; usher of Merchant Taylors' School, 1677; first headmaster of Erasmus Smith's school in Galway, 1678.[1][2]
He published devotional verses, 1671, a treatise on shorthand, 1674, primers of English and Latin, 1674-5, an English dictionary, 1676, and a Latin dictionary, 1677.[1] The shorthand used by Thomas Bayes has been identified as that of Thomas Shelton, as modified by Coles.[3]
His 1676 Dictionary contains
Coles' dialectal entries are mostly collected from the glossary by John Ray with some additions from the Dictionarium Rusticum in John Worlidge's 1669 Systema Agriculturae.