Specialized dictionaries english and the USA

1. Specialized dictionaries ENGLISH AND the USA

SPECIALIZED DICTIONARIES ENGLISH
AND THE USA

2. The History of Compiling Dictionaries for English

THE HISTORY OF COMPILING DICTIONARIES FOR ENGLISH
The theory and practice of compiling dictionaries is called lexicography.
The history of compiling dictionaries for English comes as far back as the Old
English period, where we can find glosses of religious books (interlinear
translations from Latin into English). Regular bilingual dictionaries began to
appear in the 15th century (Anglo-Latin, Anglo-French, Anglo-German).
The first unilingual dictionary explaining difficult words appeared in 1604,
the author was Robert Cawdry, a schoolmaster.
In 1775 an English scientist Samuel Johnson compiled a famous explanatory
dictionary. Every word in his dictionary was illustrated by examples from English
literature, the meanings of words were clear from the contexts in which they were
used.
In 1884 the first volume of a dictionary including all the words existing in
the language was published. It contained words beginning with A and B. The last
volume was published in 1928. The dictionary was called NED (New English
Dictionary) and contained 12 volumes.

3. Classification of Dictionaries

CLASSIFICATION OF DICTIONARIES
All dictionaries are divided into linguistic and encyclopaedic dictionaries. Encyclopaedic
dictionaries describe different objects, phenomena, people and give some information about
them. Linguistic dictionaries describe vocabulary units, their semantic structure , their
origin, their usage. Words are usually given in the alphabetical order. Linguistic dictionaries
are divided into general and specialized dictionaries.
General dictionaries include explanatory and translation dictionaries. Specialized
dictionaries include dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, collocations, wordfrequency,
neologisms, slang, pronouncing, etymological, phraseological and others. All types of
dictionaries can be unilingual if the explanation is given in the same language, bilingual if
the explanation is given in another language and also they can be polylingual. There are a lot
of explanatory dictionaries: NED (New English Dictionary), SOD (Shorter Oxford
Dictionary), COD (Concise Oxford Dictionary). In explanatory dictionaries the entry
consists of the spelling, transcription, grammatical forms, meanings, examples, phraseology.
Translation dictionaries give words and their equivalents in the other language. There are
English-Russian dictionaries by I.R. Galperin (БАРС - Большой Англо-русский Словарь)
consisting of two volumes, by Y. Apresyan (three volumes) and others.

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Specialized dictionaries of synonyms are also widely used. There are
unilingual dictionaries: A Dictionary of English Synonyms and Synonymous
Expressions by R. Soule, Webster‘s Dictionary of Synonyms. The best known
bilingual dictionary is English Synonyms compiled by Y. Apresyan.
Pharsealogical dictionaries describe idioms and colloquial phrases, proverbs.
Some of them have examples from literature. The most famous bilingual dictionary
of phraseology was compiled by A.V. Koonin. It consists of one volume and
contains a lot of data. Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the
oldest forms of these words and forms of these words in other languages. One of
the best etymological dictionaries was compiled by W. Skeat.
Pronouncing dictionaries record only pronunciation. The most famous is D.
Jones‘s Pronouncing Dictionary. Dictionaries of neologisms are : a four-volume
Supplement to NED by Burchfield, Beyond the Dictionary by Brian Locket,
Bloomsary Dictionary of NewWords and others.

5. The Origins of Dictionaries

THE ORIGINS OF DICTIONARIES
History of human languages: 50,000 years
History of writing systems: a few thousand
years
History of dictionaries: 700 years
The origin of an English dictionary: glosses

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The history of English dictionaries can be divided into
five periods:
1. the first period: from the Middle Ages to the end
of the16th century
This is a period of glossary-looking. We had LatinEnglish glossaries in the Middle English period, such as
Thomas Cooper’s Thesaurus Linguae Romanae of
Britannicae (1565)

7. 2. the second period: the beginning of the 17th century

2. THE SECOND PERIOD: THE BEGINNING OF THE 17TH
CENTURY
This is a period of the glossary dealing with hard
words, such as Robert Cawdrey’s A Tale of
Alphabetical English Words (1604).

8. 3. the third period: the middle of the 17th century to the end of the century

3. THE THIRD PERIOD: THE MIDDLE OF THE 17TH
CENTURY TO THE END OF THE CENTURY
This is a period when etymology of words is
added to the meaning. Stephen Skinner’s
Etymological Linguae Anglicanae (1667) is a
representative work of this period.

9. 4    the fourth period: the whole 18th century

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THE FOURTH PERIOD: THE WHOLE 18TH CENTURY
In this period, dictionaries had established the
standards of spelling, meaning and usage of English
words.
Henry Cockeram’s English Dictionary (The English
Dictionary, or An Interpreter of Hard English Words,
1623) first used the word “dictionary” in the sense in
which we now understand it.
An excellent example of this period is Samule
Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language of
1755.

10. 5  the fifth period: the 19th century to the 20th century

5 THE FIFTH PERIOD: THE 19TH CENTURY TO THE 20TH
CENTURY
This is a period when English dictionaries saw
much improvement and reached maturity. The
representative works of this period are:
Charles Richardson’s A New Dictionary of the
English Language (1836)

11. The Oxford English Dictionary (1928)

THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (1928)
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1911)
Noah Webster’s The American Dictionary of the
English Language (1828)
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of
the English Language (1961)

12. Types of Dictionaries

TYPES OF DICTIONARIES
Bilingual
dictionaries
Monolingual dictionaries
Specialized dictionaries
General-purpose dictionaries

13. Unabridged

UNABRIDGED
Compiled from scratch, largely from its own files of
citations, with all definitions and arrangements of
meanings and examples determined by its own editors
Not a shortened version of some other dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary: include every words in
English since the Norman Conquest

14. Second edition in 1989

SECOND EDITION IN 1989
Three versions:
Twenty very large heavy printed volumes
Two-volume compact edition(1/4 size)
A compact disk, the whole dictionary and search
program: $200, $400
Third edition: 2005

15. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of English Language

WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL
DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
1961 published by the Merriam-Webster
Company
Contains a lot of technical terms
450,000 entries
Replaced the Webster’s New International
dictionary of 1934
600,000 entries: largest

16. Desktop dictionaries

DESKTOP DICTIONARIES
The Chambers Dictionary(90s)
All derived forms are listed under within the
entry under a single head word.

17. For American users

FOR AMERICAN USERS
The American Heritage Dictionary
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
Random house Webster’s College Dictionary
Websrter’s New World Dictionary of the
American language.

18. What is it Specialized dictionary?

WHAT IS IT SPECIALIZED DICTIONARY?
Specialized dictionary deals with lexical units
only in relation to some of their characteristic
features, i.e. only in relation to their etymology,
pronunciation, usage, e.g. the Longman
Pronunciation Dictionary.

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A specialized dictionary is a dictionary that covers a relatively
restricted set of phenomena. The definitive book on the
subject includes chapters on (among others) dictionaries of:
synonyms
pronunciations
names (place names and personal names)
phrases and idioms
dialect terms
slang
quotations
etymologies

20. World Book Dictionary

WORLD BOOK DICTIONARY
The World Book Dictionary is a two
volume English dictionary published
as a supplement to the World Book
Encyclopedia. It was originally
published in 1963 under the
editorship of Clarence Barnhart, who
wrote definitions for the ThorndikeBarnhart graded dictionary series for
children, based on the educational
works of Edward Thorndike whom
Clarence Barnhart had known and
worked with decades before. In some
editions it was called the World Book
Encyclopedia Dictionary.

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Like the encyclopedia, it is designed to be user friendly
to young people, yet comprehensive enough to be
useful to adults. The definitions are designed with
consideration for the age at which a person usually
encounters the word. Quotations or sample sentences
are offered with many words. Most proper names are
excluded, leaving their treatment to the encyclopedia.
The word list is based on a formula for calculating
frequency of use. Originally covering about 180,000
words, it has expanded to nearly a quarter million,
making it considerably larger than most dictionaries,
though not of "unabridged" scope

23. Double-Tongued Dictionary

DOUBLE-TONGUED DICTIONARY
The Double-Tongued Dictionary is an online
dictionary. It catalogs a growing lexicon of
undocumented or under-documented words on the
fringes of English, focusing on slang, jargon, and
new words.
Formerly known as the Double-Tongued Word
Wrester, the dictionary strives to record terms and
expressions that are omitted, or are poorly covered,
in mainstream dictionaries. It also features
definitions and citations of strange and unusual
words or phrases such as "parergon," "epigenetics,"
and "bleeding deacon."
The information on this site is compiled, written and
edited by lexicographer Grant Barrett.

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25. Urban Dictionary

URBAN DICTIONARY
Urban Dictionary is a Web-based dictionary of slang
words and phrases, which contains more than seven
million definitions as of 2 March 2013. Submissions
are regulated by volunteer editors and rated by site
visitors. Time's Anita Hamilton included it on her 50
best websites of 2008 list.
The site was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham
while he was a freshman computer science major at
California Polytechnic State University. One of the
first definitions on the site was "the man", referring to
"the faces of the establishment put in place to 'bring
us down'".
The website was referenced in a 2011 District Court
complaint by ATF agents to document the meaning of
the vulgarism "murk" as used in a criminal threat. It
also consists of names and slang

26. Content

CONTENT
n the context of Urban Dictionary, "definitions" include not only
literal definitions, but also descriptions. As such, "to define" a word
or phrase on Urban Dictionary does not necessarily entail providing
a strict definition; merely a description of some aspect of the word
or phrase could suffice for inclusion in the dictionary.
Originally, Urban Dictionary was used mostly to define slang or
cultural words or phrases not typically found in standard
dictionaries, but it is now used to define any word or phrase. Words
or phrases on Urban Dictionary may have multiple definitions,
usage examples, and tags.
Visitors to Urban Dictionary may submit definitions without
registering, but they must provide a valid e-mail address. Before
they are included in the dictionary, all new definitions must be
approved by voluntary editors. Editors are not given any guidelines
to use when approving or rejecting definitions.

27. Traffic and users

TRAFFIC AND USERS
As of March 2013, the site contains over 7
million definitions. As of April 2009, an average
of 2,000 are submitted every day; the site
receives approximately 15 million unique
visitors per month, with 80% of users being
younger than 25.тAs of February 2013, Urban
Dictionary's Alexa rating is 845,with a rating of
396 in the United States and 43,559 sites
linking in.

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30. Thanks for your attention!

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION!