Specialist Vocabulary, Encyclopedic Material

Specialist Vocabulary

One of the most important uses of a dictionary is to provide explanations of terms in specialized fields which 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 Oxford Dictionary of English has been to break down the barriers to understanding specialist vocabulary. The challenge has been, on the one hand, to give information which 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 out technical information, eg Latin names, chemical formulae, from the rest of the definition (shown immediately after a bullet). For examples, see balloonfish 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 cuttlebone.

As elsewhere, the purpose is to give information which 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 examples, see earth and Eocene.

An especially important feature of the Oxford Dictionary of English is the coverage of animals and plants. In-depth research and a thorough review have been carried out for animals and plants throughout the world and, as a result, a large number of entries have been included which have never before been included in general dictionaries. The style and presentation of these entries follow the general principles for specialist vocabulary in the Oxford Dictionary of English: the entries not only give the technical information, but also describe, in everyday English, the appearance and other characteristics (of behaviour, medicinal or culinary use, mythological significance, reason for the name, etc.) and the typical habitat and distribution. For examples, see mesosaur, kowari and hiba.

Encyclopedic Material

Some British dictionaries do not include entries for the names of people and places and other proper names. 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 England are as much part of the language as words such as drama or language, and belong in a large dictionary.

The Oxford Dictionary of English 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 be traditionally classified. Both the style of definitions in the Oxford Dictionary of English and the inclusion of additional material in separate blocks reflect this approach.

The Oxford Dictionary of English includes more than 4,500 place-name entries, 4,000 biographical entries, and just under 3,000 other proper names. The 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 really important encyclopedic entries - for example, countries - a fuller

treatment is given and additional information is given in a separate note ( ).