自考英語綜合一 上冊 lesson6
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How Dictionaries Are Made
It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning,
that we learn these meanings mainly from teachers and grammars,
and that dictionaries and grammar books are the highest authority
in matters of meaning and usage.
Few people ask by what authority
the writers of dictionaries and grammars say what they say.
I once got into an argument with an English woman
over the pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary
The English woman said firmly,"What for?I am English.
I was born and brought up in England.
The way I speak is English.
"Such confidence about one's own language is not uncommon among the English
In the United States,however,
anyone who is willing to quarrel with the dictionary
is regarded as out of his mind.
Let us see how dictionaries are made and how the editors arrive at definitions
What follows applies only to those dictionary offices
where firsth and research goes on
not those in which editors simply copy existing dictionaries.
The task of writing a dictionary
begins with reading huge amounts
of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to cover.
As the editors read,they copy on cards every unusual use of a common word,
a large number of common words is their ordinary uses,
and also the sentences in which each of these words appears.
That is to say,the context of each word s collected,along with the word itself.
For a really big job of dictionary writing,such as the Oxford English Dictionary
millions of such cards are collected,and the task of editing occupies decades.
As the cards are collected,they are arranged in alphabetical order.
When the sorting is completed,
there will be for each word anywhere from two or three
to several hundred sentences,
each on its card,which illustrate the meaning and use of the word.
To define a word,then,
the dictionary editor places before him all the cards illustrating that word;
each of the cards represents an actual use of the word by a writer of some importance
He reads the cards carefully,throws away some,rereads the rest,
and divides them up according to what he thinks
are the several senses of the word.
Finally,he writes his definitions,
following the hard-and-fast rule
that each definition must be based on what the sentences
in front of him show about the meanings of the word.
The editor cannot be influenced by what he thinks a given word ought to mean
He must work according to the cards,or not at all.
The writing of a dictionary,therefore,
is not a task of setting up ruling statements about the"true meanings"of words
but a task of recording,to the best of one's ability,
what arious words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past.
The writer of a dictionary is a historian,not a lawgiver.
If,for example,we had been writing a dictionary in 1890,or even as late as 1919
we could have said that the word"broadcast"means"to scatter"(seed,for example)
but we could not have laid down that from 1919
on the most common meaning of the word should become
"to send out programs by radio or television."
To regard the dictionary as an"authority,"therefore,
is to look upon the dictionary writer as being able to see into the future
which neither he nor anyone else can do.
In choosing our words when we speak or write,
we can be guided by the historical record provided for us by the dictionary
but we should not be bound by it,
because new situations,new experiences,new inventions,
new feelings are always making us give new uses to old words.
