Alexandre le blond’s „Explication des termes d’Architecture“ has a longer title which lists many different working fields. For example, mathematics, mechanics, sculpture and many more. It is not only an architecture related dictionary, but also includes many different topics. Therefore, it tries to speak to architects, but also to someone who works in a related branch. The book has a short “avertissement” of six pages where he introduces the book and its reason. The rest contains a list of terms which are alphabetically structured. The terms are explained quite brief. With the fact that the book is quite small, it was probably carried around and used to get to the same understanding of things. Illustrations are left out; I suppose because it does not go into great detail of the terms and wants to explain something only with words so it can be talked about it.
The author of the book is Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond. He was a French-Russian Architect and garden designer who lived in early 18. century. Thanks to his family, he was since his early life close to different forms of art. Due to this background, he probably wants give an insight in his broad understanding of art and give the reader an insight in the many forms.