How Dictionaries Are Made

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It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning, that we learn these meanings mainly from teachers and grammarians, and that dictionaries and grammars are the supreme authority in matters of meaning and usage. Few people ask by what authority the writers of dictionaries and grammars say what the say. I once got into a dispute with an English woman over the pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary. The English woman said firmly, \"What for? I am English. I was born and brought up in England. The way I speak is English.\" Such self-assurance about one's own language is fairly common among the English. In the United States, however, anyone who is willing to quarrel with the dictionary is regarded as either eccentric or mad.
   Let us see how dictionaries are made and how the editors arrive at definitions. What follows applies only to those dictionary offices where first-hand, original research goes on - not those in which editors simply copy existing dictionaries. The task of writing a dictionary begins with the reading of vast amounts of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to cover. As the editors read, they copy on cards every interesting or rare word, every unusual or peculiar occurrence of a common word, a large number of common words in their ordinary uses, and also the sentences in which each of these words appears.
   That is to say, the context of each word is collected, along with the word itself. For a really big job of dictionary writing, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, millions of such cards are collected, and the task of editing occupies decades. As the cards are collected, they are alphabetized and sorted. When the sorting is completed, where will be for each word anywhere from two or three to several hundred quotations, each on its card.
   To define a word, then, the dictionary editor places before him the stack of cards illustrating that word; each of the cards represents an actual use of the word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. He reads the cards carefully, discards some, re-reads the rest, and divides up the stack according to what he thinks are the several senses of the word. Finally, he writes his definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule that each definition must be based on what the quotations in front of him reveal about the meaning of the word. The editor cannot be influenced by what the thinks a given word ought to mean. He must work according to the cards, or not at all.
   The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the \"true meanings\" of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past. If, for example, we had been writing a dictionary in 1890, or even as late as 1919, we could have said that the word \"broadcase\" means \"to scatter\" (seed, for example), but we could not have states that from 1921 on, the most common meaning of the word should become \"to send out programs by radio or television.\" In choosing our words when we speak or write, we can be guided by the historical record provided us by the dictionary, but we cannot be bound by it, because new situations, new experiences, new inventions, new feelings, are always forcing us to give new uses to old words. Looking under a \"hood,\" we should ordinarily have found, five hundred years ago, a monk; today, we find a car engine.


   人们普遍认为每个单词都有准确的词义，人们还认为我们主要是向教师和语法学家们学习这些词义，人们还谥为一切词典和语法书都是解释词义和词的用法的最高权威。几乎没有人会提出这样的问题：词典和语法的编著者们根据什么权威资料来说出他们所说的那些话。我有一次曾和一位英国妇女争论过一个英语单词的发音。我让她查一查英语词典。这位英国妇女坚定地说：\"还查词典干什么？我是英国人。我生在英国，长在英国。我讲的话是英语\"。在全体英格兰人当中这种对自己语言的十分自信的态度是相当普遍的。可是，在美国，若是有人想同词典争论，那或者会被认为是颠狂或者是疯子。
   让我们来看看各类词书都是怎样编成的，看看编者们是怎样给每个词条下定义的。下面所述的方法是那些汇集第一手的原始研究资料的词典编纂机构所采用的，而不是那些只是简单地抄一抄现有的一些词典的内容的那些编词典的机构所采用的方法。编词典的工作始于博览所编的词书内容所包括的该段时期里该门学科内有关的浩瀚的文献资料。在词书编者们博览群书的过程中，他们把每一个有趣的词汇，罕见的词汇，每一个普通词汇的不普通的特别的用法，大量常见词的种种常见的用法，以及这些词汇所出现的例句都一一作成卡片。
   这也就是说，不但要汇集该词汇，而且还要把每个词所出现的上下文语言环境也汇集起来。对于编写词典这样十分庞大的工程来说，例如编像《牛津英语大词典》之类，要汇集数百万张卡片。因此要完成这样一部巨著需要费时数十年。在汇集卡片的过程中，要把卡片按字母顺序排列加以分类整理。分类整理工作完成之后，整本词典不论在任何位置上的单词都应当有从二三句到数百个例句的引文出现在该单词的卡片上。
   为了确定单词的义项，然后，词典的编者就把能说明该单词用法的那一堆卡片摆在自己的面前；每一张卡片都阐明了某一文学作品或某一重要历史文献的作者对该单词的实际用法。词典编者要仔细认真地研读，再根据词典编者认为单词所含有的几个义项将这一推卡片加以分类。最后词典编者写出每个义项的定义，在下定义时，编者必须遵守这样一条不容改变的铁的规则：那就是每个义项的定义编者必须根据摆在面前那些卡片上的例句所含有的该词的词义来写。词典编者不能接受到自己认为某词应该有某个义项的这一想法的影响。词典的编者必须根据所汇集的卡片来编词典，不然的话，就根本不必去汇集那些卡片了。
   因此，编写一部词典并不是这样一种工作：编者以权威的身份给所有的单词都规定出一些所谓的\"真正的词义\"；编写词典是一种记录工作，编者要尽自己的最大努力记录下在很久以前或在最近刚出版的著作中，各种不同的的单词所具有的意义。例如，如果我们是在1890年或者迟至1919年或者迟至在1919年编写一本词典，我们本来可以说broadcast这个词的意思是\"撒播\"（例如：撒播种子），但是从1921年起我们就不能再这样说了。从1921年起这个词最普遍的意义应该是\"通过收音机或电视机播出节目\"。当我们说话或写作时在精选推敲用词方面，我们要依词典提供给我们历史上的记录为准绳，但也不能受词典上的记录所束缚，因为一些新的情况，新的经历，新的发明，新的感情总是迫使我们给旧的词汇赋予新的用法。我们查一下\"hood\"这个词，就会发现，在500年前，意思是\"修道士\"（a monk），今天这一词条下的解释却是汽车引擎或汽车发动机。