The selection and arrangement of word-meanings

There are at least three different ways in which the word meanings are arranged: a) in the historical order, i.e. in the sequence of their historical development; b) in the empirical or actual order, i.e. in conformity with their frequency of use, i.e. with the most common meaning first; c) in the logical order, i.e. according to their logical connection.

In different dictionaries the problem of arrangement is solved differently. For example, the general principle on which meanings in the New Oxford Dictionary of English are organized is that each word has at least one core meaning, to which a number of submeanings can be attached. Core meanings, as the authors of the dictionary point out, represent typical, central uses of the word in question in modern Standard English. It is the meaning accepted by native speakers as the one that is most established as literal and central.

In many dictionaries meanings are generally organized by frequency of use, but sometimes the primary meaning comes first if this is considered essential to a correct understanding of derived meanings.

The definition of meaningsis connected with the problem of semasiology. The meaning of words is revealed through definitions.

Meanings of words may be defined in different ways: a) by means of linguistic definitions that are only concerned with words as speech material. They are used in the majority of entries; b) by means of encyclopedic definitions that are concerned with things for which the words are names; c) by means of synonymous words and expressions; d) by means of cross-references.

The choice of this or that type of definition depends, as a rule, on the nature of the word, i.e. usually the part of speech the word belongs to, and on the aim of the dictionary and its size. Encyclopedic definitions, for example, are typical of nouns, especially proper nouns and terms. They play a very important role in unabridged dictionaries. Synonyms are used most often to define verbs and adjectives. They are used in shorter dictionaries usually for economizing space. Cross-references are resorted to define some derivatives, abbreviations and variant forms.

American dictionaries are traditionally encyclopedic, which accounts for so much attention paid to graphic illustration. They furnish their readers with far more information about facts and things than their British counter­parts, which are more linguistic and more fundamentally occupied with purely lexical data (as contrasted to r e a 1 i a), with the grammatical properties of words, their components, their stylistic features, etc.

The definition of the volume of the semantic structure of words, semantic components of meaning. If ‘sharp’ has 21 meanings, shall we speak about meaning or usage?