Painting the Forth Bridge: coping with obsolescence in a monolingual English dictionary

By November 17, 2016,
Page 221-231
Author Ian Brookes
Title Painting the Forth Bridge: coping with obsolescence in a monolingual English dictionary
Abstract Theoretical approaches to the dictionary-making process often assume that the lexicographer is working with a tabula rasa. In practice, most of the dictionaries that reach the bookshops have been created by updating an existing text, often one that was originally compiled several decades previously and which contains information that may therefore no longer be accurate. One of the main tasks confronting the editors of a dictionary in such cases is to identify information in the existing text that has become obsolete. This paper draws on recent experience of updating The Chambers Dictionary (which was originally published in 1901) in looking at the problem of obsolescence in dictionary text. It seeks to identify some of the principal causes of obsolescence and suggests some approaches that lexicographers can use when updating dictionaries.
Session The Dictionary-Making Process
Keywords
BibTex 
@InProceedings{ELX04-023,
	   author = {Ian Brookes},
	   title = {Painting the Forth Bridge: coping with obsolescence in a monolingual English dictionary },
	   pages = {221-231},
	   booktitle = {Proceedings of the 11th EURALEX International Congress},
	   year = {2004},
	   month = {july},
	   date = {6-10},
	   address = {Lorient, France},
	   editor = {Geoffrey Williams and Sandra Vessier},
	   publisher = {UniversiteĢ de Bretagne-Sud, FaculteĢ des lettres et des sciences humaines},
	   isbn = {29-52245-70-3},
	}
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