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The New Oxford American Dictionary
Introduction
The
New Oxford American Dictionary
has been compiled according to principles
that are quite different from those of traditional American dictionaries. New types of
evidence are now available in sufficient quantity to allow lexicographers to construct
a picture of the language that is more accurate than has been possible before. The
approach to structuring and organizing within individual dictionary entries has been
rethought, as has the approach to the selection and presentation of information in
every aspect of the dictionary: definitions, choice of examples, grammar, word
histories, and every other category. New approaches have been adopted in
response to a reappraisal of the workings of language in general and its relation-
ship to the presentation of information in a dictionary in particular. The aim of this
introduction is to give the user background information for using this dictionary and
to explain some of the thinking behind these new approaches.
Structure: Core Sense and Subsense
The first part of speech is the primary one for that word: thus, for bag and balloon
the senses of the noun are given before those for the verb, while for babble and
bake the senses of the verb are given before those of the noun.
Introductions to the
Dictionaries
nose
CORE SENSE
the part projecting above the mouth on the face of a person or animal,
containing the nostrils and used for breathing and smelling.
SUBSENSE
the sense of smell, esp. a
dog’s ability to track
something by its scent:
a dog with a keen nose.
SUBSENSE
figurative
an instinctive
talent for detecting
something:
he has a nose for a
good script.
SUBSENSE
the aroma of a particular
substance, esp. wine.
Within each part of speech, the first definition given is the core sense. The general
principle on which the senses in the
New Oxford American Dictionary
are organized
is that each word has at least one core meaning, to which a number of subsenses
may be attached. If there is more than one core sense (see below), this is
introduced by a bold sense number. Core meanings represent typical, central uses
of the word in question in modern standard English, as established by research on
and analysis of American and World English through corpora (language databanks)
and citation databases. The core meaning is the one that represents the most literal
sense that the word has in ordinary modern American usage. This is not necessar-
ily the same as the oldest meaning, because word meanings change over time. Nor
is it necessarily the most frequent meaning, because figurative senses are
sometimes the most frequent. It is the meaning accepted by native speakers as the
one that is most established as literal and central.
The core sense also acts as a gateway to other, related subsenses. These
subsenses are grouped under the core sense, each one being introduced by a solid
square symbol.
There is a logical relationship between each subsense and the core sense under
which it appears. The organization of senses according to this logical relationship is
designed to help the user, not only in being able to navigate the entry more easily
and find relevant senses more readily, but also in building up an understanding of
how senses in the language relate to one another and how the language is
constructed on this model. The main types of relationship of core sense to
subsense are as follows:
PWE350_introToDict0707.pm65 07/09/2004, 15:5229
Black