The arrival of modern linguistics cannot be fully appreciated, however, without epochal context: in 1887, the University of Coimbra approved, and its press published, the doctoral thesis of António Garcia Ribeiro de Vasconcelos, which contains statements such as this, certainly not ironic: 'the dispersion of Babel, having no nature of punishment, was nevertheless a most wise measure of Divine Omnipotence' (quoted Filólogos Portugueses entre 1868 e 1943, 'Portuguese Philologists between 1868 and 1943', 1996 p. 27).

The 1870s were a decade rich in activity for Adolfo Coelho. After a dispute with Levy Maria Jordão concerning the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum by Hübner, memorable only for the title of his pamphlet (A Sciencia Allemã e a Ignorancia Portuguesa, 'German Science and Portuguese Ignorance'), and from the remaining shrapnel of Casino conferences, in 1871 he published Theoria da conjugação em latim e portuguez. Estudo de grammatica comparativa (Theory of Conjugation in Latin and Portuguese. Study of Comparative Grammar), a title that echoes the Bopp treatise, who in 1816 compared Sanskrit with Latin, Greek, Persian and Germanic languages. An important linguistic introduction to the Grande diccionario portuguez (Great Portuguese Dictionary) by Domingos Vieira dates from the same year, and was reprinted three years later in Questões da língua portuguesa (Portuguese Language Issues, 1874). He was editor of Bibliographia critica de historia e litteratura (Critical Bibliography of History and Literature, 1873-5), a journal of book reviews, largely written by Coelho himself. He also became involved in numerous controversies and disputes, something for which he had an unashamed penchant: against Fausto de Castilho (Sciencia e probidade..., 'Science and Probity', 1873), against Inocêncio and a critique of his Lingua portugueza (Portuguese Language, 1870), in the Dicionário da Academia das Ciências (Dictionary of the Academy of Sciences, 1870), against Levy Maria Jordão in defence of Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum by the German Hübner (1870), about the Historia da litteratura portugueza by Teófilo Braga (History of Portuguese Literature, 1872).

In 1878 he began teaching at the Curso Superior de Letras and, from 1911, at the Faculty of Letters of Lisbon. Along with university teaching, which he continued until the end of his life, he intensified production of the aforementioned works on teaching. The studies that are primarily responsible for his lasting international fame also emerged at this time.

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