Dictionary Entry Definition
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A Dictionary Entry Definition is the definitional statement associated with a dictionary entry.
- AKA: Entry Definition.
- Context:
- It can have one or more Dictionary Word Sense Definitions.
- It can have have one or more Dates of usage (typically earliest recorded usage).
- for example: middle-20th century,
M20.
- for example: middle-20th century,
- It can have have one or more sample Sentences of usage.
- for example "
I. Asimov: The time would come when unfertilised ova could be stored in [banks] at ..."
- for example "
- Example(s):
- “Any of the various usually small South American characin fishes (genus /Serrasalmo) having very sharp teeth.”.
- "1a: noun, adjective, or pronoun inflection especially in some prescribed order of the forms b: a class of nouns or adjectives having the same type of inflectional forms 2: a falling of or away :
deterioration3:descent,slope" … 5 A small enclosed receptacle for money. Chiefly in piggy bankS.V. PIGGYnounM20. 6 A reserve of something (e.g. blood, data) stored for future use; a place holding this.M20. I.Asimov 'The time would come when unfertilised ova could be stored in banks at ...'"
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Dictionary Entry Word.
References
1999
- (M-W Colleg. Dict., 1999) ⇒ Merriam-Webster. (1999). “Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition.
- NOTES: It suggests that a Dictionary Entry focuses on the Denotation of Words rather than their Connotation.
- QUOTE: If one function of a dictionary is more important than its many others, surely that function is to define the meaning of words.
- QUOTE: … our understanding of the semantic system is very imperfect, and much of what we do know about it does not come very obviously into play in a dictionary.
- QUOTE: Perhaps the first thing that we need to remind ourselves of is that when we speak of the meaning of a word we are employing an artificial, if highly useful, convention. Meaning does not truly reside within the word but in the minds of those who hear or read it. This fact alone guarantees that the meaning will be to a great degree amorphous: no two people have had exactly the same experience with what a word refers to and so the meaning of the word will be slightly or greatly different for each of us.
- QUOTE: So dictionary editors involve the traditional distinction between denotation - the direct and specific part of meaning which is sometimes indicated as the total of all the referents of a word and is shared by all or most people who use the word - and connotation - the more personal association and shades of meaning that gather about a word as a result of individual experience and which may not be widely shared. The dictionary concerns itself essentially with the denotations of words.