Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 September 26

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 26

Did anyone ever make an abridged dictionary with an "easy cutoff"?

Not just a "hard cutoff" (or possibly instead of one) Why wasn't this more common? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:32, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Please explain the diff. (Although I agree that they abridge too far). StuRat (talk) 03:50, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Abridged dictionaries delete hard words like honorificabilitudinitatibus and muriatic. Why not delete the ones least likely to need to be looked up like "the", "it", "car", "kitten" etc.? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:30, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, common words are likely to also have less common definitions, for one thing. You might find something like what you want by going to specific dictionaries, like a medical dictionary. They wouldn't define the terms you just listed, but might define seemingly obvious medical terms, like "head", more specifically, so the exact location where the neck ends and the head begins would be defined, for example. StuRat (talk) 04:38, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

You could just keep definitions like boat (full house in poker) and delete boat (vessel). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:13, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Sagittarian Milky Way -- early dictionaries, such as the Table Alphabeticall, were mainly lists of "hard" words, and omitted words that were considered to be obvious for native speakers. Over the long term, this approach was not found to be useful for comprehensive general-purpose dictionaries (as opposed to specialized vocabulary lists and such)... AnonMoos (talk) 05:14, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Do they make vocabulary lists with definitions as long and good as a quality dictionary? If so, comprehensive dictionaries are probably still much more common. No pocket dictionaries ever tried this? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:13, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

The nearest approach I've seen is The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (Oxford University Press 1981, with subsequent corrected reprints). It followed on from the 11 editions of the OUP's internal House style manual (1905–1973), for use in conjunction with their Hart's Rules (whose article also describes the OEDfW&E), and includes only words whose spelling, hyphenation or usage might be ambiguous for professional writers and/or editors, and those at a tertiary education level. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.217.210.199 (talk) 13:06, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

A theological college has just produced a glossary to the Book of Common Prayer [1]. It contains words which have become obsolete or changed their meanings. Examples:

• comfortable - providing strength
• magnify - give praise to
• quick - living

• As for quick meaning alive, you do have to admit that the dead tend to be rather slow (heck, even undead zombies are). StuRat (talk) 20:44, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

"quick" vivus жив and βιος are all cognates. μηδείς (talk) 03:09, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

What else would "magnify" mean? And in what sense is it obsolete? Nyttend (talk) 03:15, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

These days, it means "make larger". But when Mary sang "My soul doth magnify the Lord", she wasn't meaning "My soul maketh the Lord larger". And a magnifying glass is not a device used when praising others (the trowel is the instrument of choice for that). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

"Magnify" = "big up" perhaps? Alansplodge (talk) 09:27, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Hm, sorry, the magnifying-glass sense wasn't coming to mind at all. The only meaning coming to mind was "O magnify the LORD with me; Let us exalt His name." Nyttend (talk) 11:20, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

• There wouldn't be much point in cutting these words out, at least from a space-saving perspective. The core vocabulary of any language is quite small (there are only 850 words in Basic English, for instance). That would be a bit more than 1% of the 65,000 entries in Chambers Dictionary. Smurrayinchester 12:25, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

You're mostly correct, but certain basic vocabulary items (such as "set") are notorious for taking up long entries in most dictionaries... AnonMoos (talk) 21:53, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

That's a fair point, but I wonder how many definitions you could definitely cut out. "put in a place" could go. Maybe "to harden by drying or coagulating". But "a series of tennis games" or "a tool for placing nails" might well be better staying. Smurrayinchester 10:08, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

It would be interesting to compare how advanced learner's dictionaries cover the most common words. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 13:27, 29 September 2017 (UTC)