Dictionaries: A Very Short Introduction by Lynda Mugglestone

Author:Lynda Mugglestone
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Linguistics, Dictionaries, Reference, General
ISBN: 9780199573790
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2011-08-18T19:01:48.496612+00:00

Dictionaries and the sea of words

The nature of the relationships between dictionary, dictionary-makers, and language underpins a number of these complexities. Earlier writers, for example, often depicted language as a sea of words which the lexicographer must traverse – ‘a sea more diuers, more dangerous, more stormie, and more comfortlesse than any Ocean’, as John Florio stressed in his World of Wordes, a dictionary of Italian and English published in 1598. Metaphors of language as sea aptly give prominence to its ceaseless movement. Here, the role of the dictionary is that of a compass or guide, offering authoritative illumination against a tide of dark words, as well as a safe course through possibly unknown areas of vocabulary and meaning.

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