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Specialist Vocabulary
One of the most important uses of a dictionary is to provide explanations of terms
in specialized fields that are unfamiliar to a general user. Yet in many traditional
dictionaries, the definitions have been written by specialists as if for other
specialists, and as a result the definitions are often opaque and difficult for the
general user to understand.
One of the primary aims of the
New Oxford American Dictionary
has been to break
down the barriers to understanding specialist vocabulary. The challenge has been,
on the one hand, to give information that is comprehensible, relevant, and readable,
suitable for the general user, while on the other hand maintaining the high level of
technical information and accuracy suitable for the more specialist user.
This has been achieved in some cases, notably entries for plants and animals and
chemical substances, by separating technical information e.g., Latin names,
chemical formulae, from the rest of the definition (shown immediately after a bullet).
For examples, see American crocodile and benzopyrene.
In other cases, it is achieved by giving additional explanatory information within the
definition itself, typically in a separate sentence. For examples, see curling and
alchemy.
As elsewhere, the purpose is to give information that is relevant and interesting,
aiming not just to define the word but also to describe and explain its context in the
real world. Additional information of this type, where it is substantial, is given in the
form of separate note (
). For example, see earth and Eocene.
An especially important feature of the
New Oxford American Dictionary
is the
coverage of American animals and plants. In-depth research and a thorough review
have been carried out for animals and plants in the Americas and throughout the
world and, as a result, a large number of entries have been included that have
never before been included in general American dictionaries. The style and
presentation of these entries follow the general principles for specialist vocabulary
in the
New Oxford American Dictionary
: the entries not only give the technical
information, but also describe, in everyday English, the appearance and other
characteristics (of behavior, medicinal or culinary use, mythological significance,
reason for the name, etc.) and the typical habitat and distribution. For examples,
see mesosaur, blacktail deer and chia.
Encyclopedic Material
Some dictionaries do not include entries for the names of people and places and
other proper names, or include them only in separate sections. The argument for
this is based on a distinction between “words” and “facts,” by which dictionaries are
about “words” while encyclopedias and other reference works are about “facts.” The
distinction is an interesting theoretical one, but in practice there is a considerable
overlap: names such as
Shakespeare
and
Mississippi
are as much part of the
language as words such as
drama
or
river
, and they belong in a large dictionary.
The
New Oxford American Dictionary
includes all those terms forming part of the
enduring common knowledge of English speakers, regardless of whether they are
classified as “words” or “names.” The information given is the kind of information
that people are likely to need from a dictionary, however that information may
traditionally be classified. Both the style of definitions in the
New Oxford American
Dictionary
and the inclusion of additional material in separate blocks reflect this
approach.
The
New Oxford American Dictionary
includes more than 5,000 place-name
entries, 4,000 biographical entries, and just under 3,000 other proper names. The
biographical entries are designed to provide not just the basic facts (such as birth
and death dates, full name, and nationality), but also a brief context giving
information about, for example, a person’s life and why he or she is important.
For a few particularly important encyclopedic entries—for example, countries—a
fuller treatment is given and additional information appears in a separate note
(
).
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