ABSTRACT:In or about 1858, Webster's Improved Dictionary of the English Language was published and printed by William Mackenzie of Glasgow, claiming on its title page that it was "A NEW EDITION, CORRECTED, IMPROVED, AND ENLARGED BY THOMAS HEBER ORR, Discoverer of the Process of Primitive Wordgrowth." It contained a Preface, nominally by Orr, together with his "New Theory of Etymology." A comparison of this with a later version of Webster's Improved Dictionary of the English Language, which made no mention of Thomas Heber Orr and omitted both the Preface and the description of "the Process of Primitive Wordgrowth," together with other materials suggests that Orr was neither the editor of the dictionary nor the discoverer of this unconvincing theory of etymology, and that Mackenzie was responsible for the whole thing.
{"title":"Thomas Heber Orr, the Evaporating Editor","authors":"David Micklethwait","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0016","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In or about 1858, Webster's Improved Dictionary of the English Language was published and printed by William Mackenzie of Glasgow, claiming on its title page that it was \"A NEW EDITION, CORRECTED, IMPROVED, AND ENLARGED BY THOMAS HEBER ORR, Discoverer of the Process of Primitive Wordgrowth.\" It contained a Preface, nominally by Orr, together with his \"New Theory of Etymology.\" A comparison of this with a later version of Webster's Improved Dictionary of the English Language, which made no mention of Thomas Heber Orr and omitted both the Preface and the description of \"the Process of Primitive Wordgrowth,\" together with other materials suggests that Orr was neither the editor of the dictionary nor the discoverer of this unconvincing theory of etymology, and that Mackenzie was responsible for the whole thing.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"145 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42112036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Translators have often been regarded by lexicographers as identical to other users, and their needs have largely been neglected in spite of the fact that they are a major group of dictionary users. In recent years and with the flourishing of online dictionaries, the development of translation dictionaries has become an important topic as a result of emerging bonds between lexicography and translation studies. The present study is an attempt to develop a method for compiling bilingual specialized dictionaries with an emphasis on translators as the main audience. The project, which is called TransLex, is based on the idea of semantic networks. It makes use of a bilingual (English and Persian) comparable corpus of road traffic and transportation materials, annotated using a set of semantic frames as well as an ontology of the concepts of this domain. An online user interface was then designed to search the database. The main feature is semantic—as opposed to alphabetic—search, which is possible through the application of several search options. This provides translators with more natural ways of expressing the concepts of a specialized field in the target language.
{"title":"Toward the Specialization of Language Resources for Translators: A Bilingual Frame-based Dictionary of Road Traffic and Transportation","authors":"Akbar Hesabi, Alireza Amraee","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0017","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Translators have often been regarded by lexicographers as identical to other users, and their needs have largely been neglected in spite of the fact that they are a major group of dictionary users. In recent years and with the flourishing of online dictionaries, the development of translation dictionaries has become an important topic as a result of emerging bonds between lexicography and translation studies. The present study is an attempt to develop a method for compiling bilingual specialized dictionaries with an emphasis on translators as the main audience. The project, which is called TransLex, is based on the idea of semantic networks. It makes use of a bilingual (English and Persian) comparable corpus of road traffic and transportation materials, annotated using a set of semantic frames as well as an ontology of the concepts of this domain. An online user interface was then designed to search the database. The main feature is semantic—as opposed to alphabetic—search, which is possible through the application of several search options. This provides translators with more natural ways of expressing the concepts of a specialized field in the target language.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"167 - 196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42372915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:The part played by Herbert Coleridge, first editor of the New English Dictionary of the Philological Society of London (later the Oxford English Dictionary), in the genesis of this great lexicographical project, and in the formulation of the dictionary's editorial policy during its earliest phase, is well known. The contributions made by his uncle, Derwent Coleridge, are much less well known. A newly identified manuscript reveals him to have played a major role in the composition of the "Canones Lexicographici," the first extended statement of editorial policy for the proposed dictionary; a full transcription of this manuscript is here presented, with notes, and an introduction exploring the interrelationships between Derwent, Herbert, and other members of the Coleridge family, several of whom were also actively engaged with English philology.
{"title":"Derwent Coleridge's \"Rough Notes\": A Newly Discovered Manuscript from the Formative Years of the Oxford English Dictionary","authors":"J. Considine, Peter Gilliver","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0013","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The part played by Herbert Coleridge, first editor of the New English Dictionary of the Philological Society of London (later the Oxford English Dictionary), in the genesis of this great lexicographical project, and in the formulation of the dictionary's editorial policy during its earliest phase, is well known. The contributions made by his uncle, Derwent Coleridge, are much less well known. A newly identified manuscript reveals him to have played a major role in the composition of the \"Canones Lexicographici,\" the first extended statement of editorial policy for the proposed dictionary; a full transcription of this manuscript is here presented, with notes, and an introduction exploring the interrelationships between Derwent, Herbert, and other members of the Coleridge family, several of whom were also actively engaged with English philology.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"1 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43737699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:For his 1598 and 1602 editions of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, Thomas Speght (c. 1550–?) compiled extensive glossaries of Chaucer's "old and obscure words." Seventeen of the words listed remained "unidentified"—not traceable to any recognizable English words—in the comprehensive survey Early Modern English Lexicography (EMEL), published in 1989. All seventeen of these entries are accounted for here and traced to manuscript variants and corruptions or misprints in the text of Chaucer. The subsequent transmission of the words in later dictionaries (as ghost words in many cases) is described, as well as their usage by Chatterton, and an emendation is proposed for the text of Thomas Usk's Testament of Love (all[e] g[y]es at II.3.7–10).
{"title":"New Solutions for Words in Thomas Speght's Chaucer Glossaries","authors":"M. Robertson","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0014","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:For his 1598 and 1602 editions of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, Thomas Speght (c. 1550–?) compiled extensive glossaries of Chaucer's \"old and obscure words.\" Seventeen of the words listed remained \"unidentified\"—not traceable to any recognizable English words—in the comprehensive survey Early Modern English Lexicography (EMEL), published in 1989. All seventeen of these entries are accounted for here and traced to manuscript variants and corruptions or misprints in the text of Chaucer. The subsequent transmission of the words in later dictionaries (as ghost words in many cases) is described, as well as their usage by Chatterton, and an emendation is proposed for the text of Thomas Usk's Testament of Love (all[e] g[y]es at II.3.7–10).","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"55 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45028080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:American courts employ dictionaries more than ever to help them determine the meaning of words in the law. Judges are starting to explore the use of corpora and corpus linguistics to do so as well. Dictionaries both support and fail to support the complex process of legal interpretation. Judges accept or reject dictionary definitions or, in some cases, they select among conflicting definitions those that fit what they feel the outcome of the case should be. The growing interest in corpus linguistics may supplement the judicial reliance on dictionaries, but both dictionary definitions and corpus evidence require interpretation, a process that is inherently subjective. Although dictionaries have some drawbacks for legal work, courts are not likely to abandon them. Corpora present their own set of problems for legal interpretation, but they may eventually join dictionaries as fundamental, if imperfect, resources for the courts.
{"title":"Look It Up in Your Funk & Wagnalls: How Courts Define the Words of the Law","authors":"Dennis Baron","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0015","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:American courts employ dictionaries more than ever to help them determine the meaning of words in the law. Judges are starting to explore the use of corpora and corpus linguistics to do so as well. Dictionaries both support and fail to support the complex process of legal interpretation. Judges accept or reject dictionary definitions or, in some cases, they select among conflicting definitions those that fit what they feel the outcome of the case should be. The growing interest in corpus linguistics may supplement the judicial reliance on dictionaries, but both dictionary definitions and corpus evidence require interpretation, a process that is inherently subjective. Although dictionaries have some drawbacks for legal work, courts are not likely to abandon them. Corpora present their own set of problems for legal interpretation, but they may eventually join dictionaries as fundamental, if imperfect, resources for the courts.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"144 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45428182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Rather than simply being abridged versions of general dictionaries, many nineteenth-century children's dictionaries were stylistically and ideologically adapted for child readers with the aim of providing social and moral education. This paper explores one facet of ideological adaptation of monolingual English children's dictionaries in nineteenth-century England, namely religious education. Before elementary education was made compulsory and secular with the 1870 Education Act, all education was fundamentally religious. However, there was disagreement about the nature of this edification. Views on childhood in this period varied, but educationalists agreed that a person's early years were the most formative. Wordings of definitions and choices of entry-words within nineteenth-century children's dictionaries were not simply guided by limitations of space or ideas about children's intellectual capabilities, but also by lexicographers' moral and religious views and their ideas about how children should be educated. This paper considers the pervasiveness of religion in children's dictionaries in terms of establishing a Protestant Christian norm against which other beliefs were judged and in terms of inculcating children with the precepts of the "true" religion. Focusing on the treatment of Roman Catholicism, the article examines religious bias and moral-religious prescriptivism in definitions and illustrative examples.
{"title":"Teaching Children \"Their Duty to God and Man\": Religion and Roman Catholicism in English Nineteenth-century Children's Dictionaries","authors":"Sarah Hoem Iversen","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0010","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Rather than simply being abridged versions of general dictionaries, many nineteenth-century children's dictionaries were stylistically and ideologically adapted for child readers with the aim of providing social and moral education. This paper explores one facet of ideological adaptation of monolingual English children's dictionaries in nineteenth-century England, namely religious education. Before elementary education was made compulsory and secular with the 1870 Education Act, all education was fundamentally religious. However, there was disagreement about the nature of this edification. Views on childhood in this period varied, but educationalists agreed that a person's early years were the most formative. Wordings of definitions and choices of entry-words within nineteenth-century children's dictionaries were not simply guided by limitations of space or ideas about children's intellectual capabilities, but also by lexicographers' moral and religious views and their ideas about how children should be educated. This paper considers the pervasiveness of religion in children's dictionaries in terms of establishing a Protestant Christian norm against which other beliefs were judged and in terms of inculcating children with the precepts of the \"true\" religion. Focusing on the treatment of Roman Catholicism, the article examines religious bias and moral-religious prescriptivism in definitions and illustrative examples.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"109 - 141"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43822603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This narrative is a practical history of the evolution of a children's dictionary in the 21st century, from the point of view of its chief lexicographer. It begins with the development and publication of the 2011 edition of the Scholastic Children's Dictionary (SCD) and goes on to document its two subsequent updates, in 2014 and 2019. Along the way, Scholastic integrated two of its earlier word reference titles into the same database that was created to hold the dictionary data. From these data they also published a pocket dictionary in 2012. Scholastic also integrated the dictionary database with Storia, their subscription-based electronic reading and reference library for schools. The author gives a picture of how evolving technology for publishers and consumers has affected a traditional print title over the course of a decade.
{"title":"Ten Years with the Scholastic Children's Dictionary","authors":"Orin Hargraves","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0001","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This narrative is a practical history of the evolution of a children's dictionary in the 21st century, from the point of view of its chief lexicographer. It begins with the development and publication of the 2011 edition of the Scholastic Children's Dictionary (SCD) and goes on to document its two subsequent updates, in 2014 and 2019. Along the way, Scholastic integrated two of its earlier word reference titles into the same database that was created to hold the dictionary data. From these data they also published a pocket dictionary in 2012. Scholastic also integrated the dictionary database with Storia, their subscription-based electronic reading and reference library for schools. The author gives a picture of how evolving technology for publishers and consumers has affected a traditional print title over the course of a decade.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"55 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45167099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Juvenile lexicography is a field in itself and deserves more attention than it has received over the years. This paper considers this important branch of lexicography through the lens of personal experience, that is, over thirty years in the publishing of English-language general dictionaries in Canada and the United States, with a significant portion of those years given over to dictionaries for children. My formal connection to the art and craft of lexicography (to borrow Sidney Landau's book title) ended over fifteen years ago. However, though methodology in all lexicography has continued to change in notable ways, the essence of the discipline has not changed and continues to draw my attention and contemplation.
{"title":"Writing Children's Dictionaries: A Personal Adventure","authors":"Victor A. Neufeldt","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0008","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Juvenile lexicography is a field in itself and deserves more attention than it has received over the years. This paper considers this important branch of lexicography through the lens of personal experience, that is, over thirty years in the publishing of English-language general dictionaries in Canada and the United States, with a significant portion of those years given over to dictionaries for children. My formal connection to the art and craft of lexicography (to borrow Sidney Landau's book title) ended over fifteen years ago. However, though methodology in all lexicography has continued to change in notable ways, the essence of the discipline has not changed and continues to draw my attention and contemplation.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"33 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47892418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This is an introduction to a special issue of Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America on the topic of children's dictionaries. It offers a brief overview of the nature of children's dictionaries and introduces the range of articles in the issue. These include professional memoirs of those involved in children's dictionary creation and publishing in North America and the UK and academic articles on nineteenth-century English children's dictionaries, the development of the Oxford Children's Language Corpus, gender stereotypes in Greek children's dictionaries, and Welsh language dictionaries for children. The introduction also describes two reports which feature in the issue: an account of a dictionary creation project in a Catalan school, and a preview of the forthcoming School edition of the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage.
{"title":"Children's Dictionaries: An Introduction","authors":"S. Rennie","doi":"10.1353/dic.2022.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0000","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This is an introduction to a special issue of Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America on the topic of children's dictionaries. It offers a brief overview of the nature of children's dictionaries and introduces the range of articles in the issue. These include professional memoirs of those involved in children's dictionary creation and publishing in North America and the UK and academic articles on nineteenth-century English children's dictionaries, the development of the Oxford Children's Language Corpus, gender stereotypes in Greek children's dictionaries, and Welsh language dictionaries for children. The introduction also describes two reports which feature in the issue: an account of a dictionary creation project in a Catalan school, and a preview of the forthcoming School edition of the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage.","PeriodicalId":35106,"journal":{"name":"Dictionaries","volume":"43 1","pages":"1 - 12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45308912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}