Course: Understanding English Dictionaries

Many of the entries for subject-specific terms in Wiktionary have been specially written and edited by subject experts. However the definitions of more ‘everyday’ words have sometimes just been copied …

Wiktionary’s inclusion criteria are more relaxed than those of Oxford University Press and Merriam-Webster, discussed in Step 4.8. In order to gain entry into Wiktionary, a term has to have …

In this question and answer session, Michael Rundell answers questions about the way dictionary editors choose new words for inclusion in their dictionaries. You can read more about Michael Rundell’s …

You learned about the role of corpora in dictionary-making in previous weeks, and in Step 4.7 you saw the effect of corpus choice on the Oxford Junior Dictionary. In Week …

In Step 4.4 we discussed some reasons why different dictionaries make different decisions about what words to include, and what not to include. First of all, there must be clear …

If you compare any two current dictionaries, you will certainly find some new words that are in one but not the other. This is because editors or contributors have made …

Do you think that if a word exists in English it will be recorded in a dictionary? Many people do think this, and dictionaries are often consulted to prove that …

Who decides what words should be in a dictionary, and how do they do this? This week you’ll learn about the way dictionaries respond to changes in the English language, …

This week you have learned about the sources of evidence that were used by lexicographers in the past and those that are used today. You learned about corpora, annotation, and …

Examples taken from corpora, unlike artificially constructed examples, show evidence for how language is actually used by people. This is one of the main strengths of corpus-based and corpus-driven lexicography. …

We have seen examples of concordance lines from corpora, and we have appreciated the role played by annotation in helping lexicographers to find relevant patterns and discover unexpected phenomena. Here …

We have seen that corpora have become an essential tool for lexicographers. Corpora are often subjected to a series of analyses to make them more readily usable for linguistic analysis …

Compared to paper slips, a corpus gives lexicographers access to a much wider context of use for a word. The electronic format of corpora makes it possible for lexicographers to …

Watch the interview with lexicographer, Liz Potter as she discusses how corpora are used by lexicographers today. As you watch the video, focus on the areas that she discusses around …

In this step, you will learn about the background to corpus-based approaches and their revolutionary impact on lexicography. In this interview with lexicographer Ramesh Krishnamurthy, you will learn about his …