USING THE DICTIONARY

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USING THE DICTIONARY
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Using the Dictionary

• ? Entry, headword, definition
• ? Compounds, synonyms and antonyms
• ? Homographs and homophones
• ? Abbreviations and acronyms
• ? Grammar codes, usage notes
• ? Cross-references, register

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Entry - Headword

• Entry
• Any of the items recorded in a dictionary (e.g.
  bear, bear up, bear witness).
• Headword
• A keyword placed at the beginning of a list of
  entries
• (e.g. bear)

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• bear¹ /be?(r)/ noun 1) a large, heavy wild
  animal with thick fur and sharp teeth a
  polar/grizzly/brown bear ? look at teddy. 2) (in
  business) a person who sells shares in a company,
  hoping to buy them back later at a lower price a
  bear market (in which prices are falling) ?
  Compare bull.

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• bear² /be?(r)/ verb (pt bore pp borne )
• 1 T (used with can/could in negative
  sentences or in questions) to be able to accept
  and deal with sthg unpleasant I cant bear
  spiders ? She couldnt bear the thought of
  anything happening to him ? How can you bear to
  listen to that music? ? The pain was almost more
  than he could bear.

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• SYN stand or endure 2) ?T? not bear sth /doing
  sth to not be suitable for sth to not allow sth
  These figures wont bear close examination (when
  you look closely you will find mistakes).
• What I would do if I lost my job doesnt bear
  thinking about (is too unpleasant to think
  about. 3) ?T? (formal) to take responsibility for
  sth

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• ?T? to support the weight of sth Twelve pillars
  bear the weight of the roof. 4)?T? (formal) to
  show sth to carry sth so that it can be seen He
  still bears the scars of his accident. ? She bore
  a strong resemblance to her mother (she looked
  like her). 5)?T? (written) to give birth to
  children She bore him four children, all sons.

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Usage Note

• NOTE a more common expression is She had four
  children. When you talk about a persons own
  birth you use be born Olivia was born in 2000.

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Idioms

• Idioms are words or phrases or expressions that
  are unusual either gramatically or there is a
  meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined
  meanings of its elements, as Its raining cats
  and dogs!.
• Compare

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IDIOMS

• Try to understand and translate the following
  English idioms
• To cook the books
• Its raining cats and dogs
• To be a dead duck
• A tooth for a tooth
• Much ado about nothing
• Keep something/someone at bay
• To be in the eye of the storm
• To bury the hatchet
• I cross my heart and hope to die
• My heart is in my mouth
• Keep your nose clean
• Bad blood
• To have blood on ones hands
• To have a frog in ones throat
• To come to a head
• Break a leg

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Definitions

• Concise statements of meaning/s of the headword
  and often of their entries. Different meanings
  are separated and arranged according to their
  frequency of use
• (e.g. Bear a large, heavy, wild animal with
  thick fur and sharp teeth)

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Compounds

• Words which are formed from two or more words
  functioning as a single unit.
• Compounds may be written
• as unbroken single words like birthplace
• with an hyphen, e.g. bitter-sweet
• as two or more separated words, e.g. boarding
  card.
• Usually compounds spelt as single words are
  listed as headwords while those spelt with an
  hyphen or as separate words are usually listed
  alphabetically in the headword entry.

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Compounding the word work

• Compounding is an extremely productive way of
  continuously performing new words. According to
  the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary
  compounding forms of work are

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Synonyms and Antonyms

• A synonym is a word that has the same meaning, or
  almost the same meaning of another word and
• an antonym is a word with the opposite meaning of
  another word (e.g. big huge small) .
• Some synonyms and antonyms usually come under the
  main definition of a headword.

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Synonyms dialect difference

• Autumn and Fall are synonyms, but the former is
  British English and the latter is American.
• Sandwich and Butty are synonymous in Britain, but
  the former is standard and the latter is regional.

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Synonyms stylistic differences

• There may be a stylistic difference
• insane and loony are synonymous, but the former
  is formal and the latter is informal.
• Salt and sodium chloride are synonymous, but the
  former is everyday and the latter is technical.

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Synonyms collocational differences

• There may be a collocational difference rancid
  and rotten are synonymous, but the former is used
  only of butter or bacon
• Kingly, royal and regal are synonymous, but the
  mail has to be royal in the UK.

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Antonyms the real opposites

• There are opposites such as large/small,
  happy/sad and wet/dry these are items which are
  capable of comparison, they do not refer to
  absolute qualities. Opposites of this kind are
  called gradable antonyms.

David Crystal "Encyclopoedia", page 165, part II
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• There are opposites such as single/married,
  first/last and alive/dead these are not gradable
  opposites (there is no scale of aliveness or
  firstness). In such cases if one of the pair of
  lexemes applies, the other does not.
• They are known as complementary antonyms.

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• There are antonyms such as over/under, buy/sell
  and wife/husband these antonyms are mutually
  dependent on each other.
• There cannot be a wife without a husband we
  cannot buy something without something being
  sold. This type of oppositeness, where one item
  presupposes the other, is called
• converseness and the lexemes are converse terms.

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Homographs

• Homographs are words that have the same spelling
  but are different in some other way.
• They may have
• Different pronunciation (e.g. the present simple
  read and past tense read)
• Different word class such as noun, verb,
  adjective (e.g. mean 1 verb, mean
• 2 adjective)
• Different meaning (e.g. pole 1 a long rounded
  piece of wood pole 2 each of the two points on
  the celestial sphere)

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Homophones

• Politicians have to find a name
• Politicians have to find an aim.
• In the example we have one phonological word
  which comprises two groups of words a name and
  an aim. Each group consists of two grammatical
  words
• (a name/ an aim).
• That is to say Homophones are different
  grammatical words which have the same phonemic
  structure or pronounciation (Jackson, 1980).

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Homophones

• They are words that have the same sound but
  different spelling
• (e.g. pair and pear)
• The best way to ensure to get them right is to
  learn them. Some ideas that might help you to
  learn them are
• Look for patterns
• Make groups of words that have similar spelling
• Make up rhymes

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Hyponyms and Hypernyms

• Hyponymy describes what happens when we say An X
  is a kind of Y, such as A daffodil is a kind of
  flower. Look at the diagram.
• Flower
• daisy
• daffodil rose
• tulip

David Crystal "Encyclopoedia", page 166, part II
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Part-Whole Relations

• The relationship between wheel and car, or sleeve
  and jacket illustrates a kind of sense relation
  that between part and whole.
• The relationship is not so obvious as it may
  seem a door is part of a house and a house is
  part of a village, but it would be unusual to say
  that a door is part of a village!

David Crystal "Encyclopoedia", page 168, part II
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Part-Whole Relations can be seen in many areas of
the lexicon
David Crystal "Encyclopoedia", page 168, part II
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Lexical Phrases

• Lexical Phrases are pre-fabricated form/function
  composites. They can be considered a kind of
  collocation with a specific function.
• 1. Some of them, called polywords have the
  function of single words and cannot undergo
  variations.

"Il lessico nell'inglese come lingua straniera",
De Meo, page 15, Chapter I
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• 2. There are also istitutionalised expressions
  such as proverbs, aphorisms and formulas for
  social interaction are

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• 3. Semi-fixed expressions of variable length
• 4. Sentence builders, moreover, include
  expressions to begin a whole sentence such as

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Abbreviations and Acronyms

• Abbreviations are shortened forms for words (like
  Dr. for Doctor, Mr for Mister) and acronyms are
  groups of letters made up of the first letters of
  the name of something (like V.I.P. Very
  Important People, or B.B.C. British
  Broadcasting Corporation).

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Abbreviations and Text-Messaging

• Succinctness and precision are highly valued and
  abbreviations can contribute greatly to a concise
  style, such as in text-messaging. Here are some
  examples

David Crystal "Encyclopoedia", page 425, part V
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Usage Notes

• They cover some important areas such as
• word sets these notes explain the difference
  between words of roughly similar meaning (fat /
  chubby/ overweight)
• difficult points of grammar and style.
• Important British and American differences/varieti
  es (ex. pants)

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Pragmatics

• Information about pragmatics
• (the way some words are used in conversation with
  a different meaning from the literal one, in
  particular context or type of language).

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Register

• Register is the style of language used in a
  particular situation (e.g. formal, informal,
  spoken, written, slang etc) and it could be
  determined by
• the relationship between the writer and the
  reader
• the kind of writing (an official letter or a
  friendly note)
• the subject matter
• the specific purpose of the writer.

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Register Labels

• In a dictionary a register label (e.g. formal)
  will show us the situation a word is used in.
• NOT POLITE A word or phrase that is considered
  rude, and that might offend some people.
• OLD FASHIONED A word that was commonly used in
  the past, but would sound old-fashioned today.
• SPOKEN A word or phrase used only, or nearly
  always, in conversation.
• WRITTEN A word or phrase used only, or nearly
  always, in written English.
• TABOO A word that should not be used because it
  is very rude or offensive.

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Cross References

• Cross references are special notes that
  direct us to related entries in a dictionary.
  They are used to draw our attention to other
  words that have some connection with the word we
  are looking at.
• There are different kinds of cross-references,
  for example
• those used to refer us to opposites of the word
  we are looking at
• e.g. happy ? unhappy ANTONYM
• happy pleased SYNONYM
• happy (adjective) happiness (noun) happily
  (adverb)
• (see Word Formation)

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Examples

• Dictionaries usually include a great number of
  examples of words in use. The examples are used
  to help us to understand the meaning of a new
  word and to show how this word is actually used.
  They may be short phrases or whole sentences and
  they are usually easy to find because they are
  written in italics.

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False Friends

• False Friends or False Cognates are two words
  (from two different languages) that look similar
  or the same, but have different meanings.

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False Friends
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False Friends
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Compounds
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Word Classes

• What class do these words belong to?

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Common Collocations

• Choose the words/phrases you can associate with
  the verbs in the table.
• a rest your homework your job a photo
  an effort a party an exam note a noise
  the washing up a mistake a bath a comment
  a problem a tootache breakfast.

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Common Collocations

• Match the verbs with the nouns that generally
  follow them.

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A TEST ON COLLOCATIONS

• Which is the best choice among the given three?
• He got full / maximum / top marks in the
  listening test
• We have to do / make / write a vocabulary test
• Shes busy reviewing / revising / studying for
  her exam
• She was always loosing / missing out / skipping
  lessons no wonder she crashed / failed / flunked
  the exam
• He suffers badly from exam nerves / stress /
  worries, which affects his concentration length /
  span / time
• The teacher made up / set / wrote a difficult
  exam but checked / corrected / marked it
  leniently