Hurry, Catch That Word

Hurry, Catch That Word

Hurry, catch that word!(from The Times, 1990)

Dictionary-making, since computers took the drudgery out of it, has become fun. Hanks, the chief editor of Collins English dictionaries actually has his computer screen propped up on a facsimile copy of Dr Samuel Johnson’s 18th century dictionary, and plays with his keyboard enthusiastically. He works from Birmingham University, leading an outfit which is rather off-puttingly known as Cobuild. It stands for the Collins and Birmingham University International Language Database, and is housed in a handsome Edwardian mansion full of crumbling, leather-bound tomes in one of Birmingham’s greener suburbs.

How do lexicographers find their words? In the 1700s, Dr Johnson, whose citations were transcribed by six Scottish clerks working in the attic of his house, found most of them from his own reading. Today, methods have changed. Cobuild has pioneered a huge electronic database, known as a “corpus”, containing 18m words – not, of course, all different. It includes complete novels, best-selling non-fiction titles, magazines and newspapers, transcripts of BBC programmes, casual conversations and lectures. A particular word, together with its context, can be called up any time on the computer screen. What’s more, the team is building up a “monitoring corpus”. Last year, it started imputing every issue of The Times, and the computer prints out new words on demand, giving the frequency with which they appear. We call up “greenhouse”, from The Times database, and watch hundreds of references to the “greenhouse effect” fill the screen, far outnumbering gardening references in relation to tomatoes and potplants.

But spoken language is important, too. A team of roving word-detectives, based in Glasgow at Collins English Dictionary Unit, visits pubs and discos, hangs about supermarkets and laundrettes and listens to loud ladies on the bus, in the race to pin down new words and meanings as soon as they are born. They scour shops for examples of new types of food and clothing. All finds are noted and go straight into the computer. The new dictionary’s new words paint a picture of life in the late 1980s. Health hazards, environmental problems, computer jargon, music argot, financial slang – it’s all there.

Other words develop new meanings while retaining the old.“Dinosaur”, for instance, now means “a person or thing which is considered to be out of date”, as well as its more familiar definition. One citation, in which Led Zeppelin are referred to as “dinosaurs of rock and roll” was overheard in Glasgow, 1988. One of Hank’s favourite new word is “check it out” in the casual sense of “have a look at” rather than “investigate” or “vet”. “We try to reflect English as it is really used today,” says Hanks. “For instance, we identify the primary meaning of ‘pylon’ as ‘a large vertical steel tower-like structure supporting high-tension electrical cables’. “In other dictionaries it appears first as an ancient Egyptian gateway.

Rosamund Moon, who has been working on the project for eight years, points out that deceptively simple words are often the most complicated. “Take ‘take’, for example. What is its core meaning? You may think it is something like ‘to transport from place to place’, but our monitoring shows us that this is not the most common use. It is much more often used in phrases such as ‘take a look’ or ‘take a photograph’. A key problem is which word to include. A new word could turn out to be ephemeral, no sooner frozen in print than disappeared from the street.

  1. The writer thinks that the name Cobuild is
  1. completely meaningless.
  2. difficult to pronounce.
  3. not very appealing.
  4. not quite accurate.
  1. The interesting thing about the word ‘greenhouse’ is that
  1. it has recently changed its meaning completely.
  2. most people use the word wrongly.
  3. most people don’t know what it means.
  4. its new meaning is more common than its original meaning.
  1. Examples of new spoken language are collected

A at meetings held in Glasgow.

B in everyday social situations.

C by specially trained police officers.

D by ordinary housewives.

  1. The article concerns the way that
  1. dictionary makers record the spoken language.
  2. methods of dictionary making have changed.
  3. Dictionaries used to be written.
  4. Dictionaries are advertised and sold.
  1. According to this old article (last line) ‘A key problem is which words to include. A new word could turn out to be ephemeral, no sooner frozen in print than disappeared from the street.’ Do you think this is still true for dictionary writers in 2014

______

  1. How does a language student in 2015 use dictionaries? Do you think it is easier today than in the 1990s to find and learn vocabulary?______

Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language 1755

Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary of the English Language' is one of the most famous dictionaries in history. First published in 1755,the dictionarytook just over eight years to compile, required six (1)______and listed 40,000 words. Each word was defined in detail, the definitions illustrated with(2)______covering every branch of learning. It was a huge scholarly achievement, and a more extensive and complex dictionarythan any of its predecessors.A group of London book-sellers had commissioned Johnson's dictionary, hoping that a book of this kind would help stabilize the rules governing the English language. In the preface to the book, Johnson writes of the 'energetic' (3) ______of the English tongue. In his view, the language was in a mess, and was in desperate need of some discipline: 'wherever I turned my view', he wrote, 'there was perplexity to be (4)______and confusion to be regulated.' However, in the process of compiling the dictionary, Johnson recognised that language is impossible to fix, because of its (5)______changing natureand that his role was to record the language of the day, rather than to form it.

Even so, many of Johnson's definitions bear the mark of a rather pompous man (but also quite a (6)______one). Many of the words he included were (7) ______to the average reader - long words such as‘deosculation’, ‘odontalgick’.He is even believedto have made up some words.His definition of oats is very (8)______to the Scots. He defines the word as 'A Grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' Johnson was criticised for imposing his (9)______on to the book. However, his dictionary was enormously popular and highly respected for its epic sense of (10)______.

  1. HELP______
  2. QUOTE______
  3. RULE______
  4. TANGLE______
  5. CONSTANT______
  6. HUMOUR______
  7. COMPREHEND______
  8. OFFEND______
  9. PERSON______
  10. SCHOLAR______
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