Search results
People also ask
What is a dictionary in English?
Why do we add words to the Dictionary?
What does the dictionary do?
How do I use a dictionary?
Here are some points for your edification: If we define a word it does not mean that we have approved or sanctioned it. The role of the dictionary is to record use of a language, not to regulate it. If we do not offer a definition for a word, or a sense, this does not necessarily mean that the word is not real.
- Examples and Observations
- The First English Dictionary
- Dictionaries and Usage
- The Limitations of Dictionaries
- Advantages of Online Dictionaries
- The Lighter Side of Dictionaries
S.I. Hayakawa The writing of a dictionary . . . is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the 'true meanings' of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what...Stephen Frye A dictionaryis an observatory, not a conservatory.R.L. Trask [T]he familiar notion that a word of English exists only if it is 'in the dictionary' is false. A word exists if people use it. But that word may fail to appear in a particular dictionar...Thomas Jefferson Dictionariesare but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the work-shop in which new ones are elaborated.David Wolman Many people mistakenly credit [Samuel] Johnson with writing the first English dictionary. That achievement belongs to a man named Cawdrey, who, 150 years before Johnson, published A Ta...
Steven Pinker Although dictionaries are powerless to prevent linguistic conventions from changing, this does not mean . . . that they cannot state the conventions in force at a given time. That is...
Keith Denning [E]ven the largest dictionaries can't capture every possible word in the language. The number of possible word combinations of word elements like pre-, pter, and scopeand the innumera...David Skinner [M]y recent affair with lexicography has left me certain of a couple of things. One is that no dictionary contains every word in the language. Even an unabridged dictionary is, well,...R.L.G. Macmillan, a publishing company, has announced that it will no longer print dictionaries. And yet it has announced this with a tone not of sadness, but excitement: "exiting print is a moment...
Dave Berry If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.Ogden Nash Seated one day at the dictionary I was pretty weary and also pretty ill at ease, Because a word I had always liked turned out not to be a word at all, and suddenly I found myself among t...A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical and stroke for logographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. [1] [2] [3] It is a lexicographi...
May 12, 2023 · The criteria. In other words, our lexicographers add a word to the dictionary when they determine that: It’s a word that’s used by a lot of people. It’s used by those people in largely the same way. It’s likely to stick around. And it’s useful for a general audience. All four of these points are important.
Nov 21, 2023 · A dictionary is a book or online resource that lists every word in a certain language and provides the user with a standard and recognizable definition of the word....
May 22, 2023 · Introductions to dictionaries explain things like how entries are arranged (they typically give the word, and the variations of the word; what part of speech the word is; pronunciation of the word; definition, etc.).
- 783.7K
