Methods of Lexicographic Definition in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary

Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1 (A), University of Zurich (English Seminar), course: Lexicography, language: English, abstract: In this paper, 80 lexicographic definitions from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary are classified and evaluated, the basic question being the following: are similar words defined in similar ways? The words are classified according to part of speech, concreteness and word frequency, and eight different ways to define a word are considered. The study confirms that concreteness and part of speech have a considerable impact on the way a particular word is defined in the ALD.