Course: Understanding English Dictionaries

In the previous historical overview, we talked about index cards and their prominent role in pre-computer lexicography. Index cards display snippets of text from books, journals, etc. They are selected …

In this interview, Michael Proffitt, Editor-in-Chief of the OED, shares his experience of working with index cards for the OED. Your task What do you think about the way in …

The field of lexicography has a long history. There is no space here for a full account, but we will mention some key dates to give you an idea of …

In Week 1, you had the opportunity to share your views about how you use dictionaries. You also started familiarising yourself with different types of dictionaries: expert-produced, collaborative and crowdsourced. …

In Week 1, we looked at some different kinds of dictionaries, including: Visual or picture dictionaries School dictionaries Advanced learners’ dictionaries Bilingual and multilingual dictionaries Monolingual general reference dictionaries Dictionaries …

Watch the video clips of people talking about how they use their dictionaries. As you saw in the video, we use dictionaries for lots of reasons. Your task In the …

Watch the video explaining the key components of a dictionary entry. As you watch the video, make written notes of the key components that make up a dictionary entry. How …

In Step 2.5 we saw that an entry in a dictionary is likely to contain: The spelling(s) of the uninflected form of the word (the lemma) The pronunciation(s) of this …

Here are some possible answers to the design task in Step 2.6: bleat: a sound recording of the noise the word describes. charabanc: an indication that the word is old-fashioned. …

In addition to the standard entry information listed in Step 2.4, many dictionaries provide other types of information to help users learn the form, context, usage and meaning of words. …

Knowing a word means more than just knowing what object or concept it refers to. If we really know a word, we should be able to answer (consciously or unconsciously) …

Watch the video in which dictionary users try to explain the meaning of some of the information commonly found in dictionary entries. How successful were they? Dictionaries vary in the …

Watch the video introducing the week and consider the big question: Why do we choose to use one particular reference tool over another? Your Task When you want to find …

This course is a collaborative project and was authored by the following academics. Hilary Nesi is a Professor of English language at Coventry University, UK. Her research activities mostly concern …

All dictionary publishers want to convince their customers that their dictionaries solve their needs best (or better), at least in some respect. Most of the dictionaries we have looked at …