presentation definition according to oxford dictionary

• Dictionaries home
• American English
• Collocations
• German-English
• Grammar home
• Practical English Usage
• Learn & Practise Grammar (Beta)
• Word Lists home
• My Word Lists
• Recent additions
• Resources home
• Text Checker

NEW words and meanings added: March 2024

Game on or game over ?

With the Summer Olympics coming up, the main focus for our latest release is on the world of sport.

Worrying about your team’s back four in the relegation six-pointer ? Did one of your team’s blueliners just score an empty-netter ? Or maybe you prefer T20™ , with the drama of one-dayers and super overs , or just like to pay your green fee and get started on the front nine ?

We’ve added over 170 new words and meanings from sport and other topics.

Our word lists are designed to help learners at any level focus on the most important words to learn.

Explore our general English and academic English lists.

Spread the Word

A recent addition to our online dictionary is the term culture war , which is used to describe the conflict between groups of people with different ideals and beliefs.

Topic Dictionaries

Our Topic Dictionaries are lists of topic-related words, like Animals and Health , that can help you expand your vocabulary. Each topic is divided into smaller subtopics and every word has a CEFR level.

Learn & Practise Grammar

Our grammar pages combine clear explanations with interactive exercises to test your understanding.

Learn more with these dictionary and grammar resources

We offer a number of premium products on this website to help you improve your english..

JOIN our community of language learners!

Connect with us TODAY to start receiving the language learning and assessment resources you need directly to your newsfeed and inbox.

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

More commonly misspelled words, commonly misspelled words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, how to use accents and diacritical marks, popular in wordplay, the words of the week - may 24, flower etymologies for your spring garden, 9 superb owl words, 'gaslighting,' 'woke,' 'democracy,' and other top lookups, 10 words for lesser-known games and sports, games & quizzes.

Presentation Definition: A Comprehensive Guide

Featured In

Table of contents, unraveling the presentation definition, what is a presentation, historical roots: from latin to modern day, types and formats of presentations, enhancing presentation skills: a guide, presentation in the digital age: multimedia and keynote, the art of visual aids: graphs and more, presentation in different languages, presentation in literature and culture, effective presentation: tips and techniques, incorporating quizzes and group activities, presentation in educational contexts, synonyms and related terms, the thesaurus and vocabulary expansion, historical and specialized types of presentations, presentation in business: introducing a new product, word of the day: presentation, key points and summarization, cultural influences and adaptations, the role of technology, eye contact and body language, the art of storytelling, innovation and new products, speechify studio.

Unraveling the Presentation DefinitionPresentation - a word frequently used in English, Spanish, Latin, French, and Arabic contexts, but what does it exactly...

Presentation - a word frequently used in English, Spanish, Latin, French, and Arabic contexts, but what does it exactly mean? In this article, we delve into the definition of presentation , exploring its various facets and applications in different fields.

The Essence of Presentation: A Definition

A presentation is the act of presenting information or ideas to a group of people in a structured and deliberate manner, often with the aid of visual aids like PowerPoint, Keynote, or multimedia tools.

Presentations are a ubiquitous part of the professional, educational, and social landscape. The act of presenting, essentially communicating information and ideas to a group of people, has evolved significantly over time. This article explores the definition of a presentation, its various formats, the skills required to make it effective, and the nuances of a great presentation, all while weaving in an eclectic mix of keywords.

The Evolution from 'Praesentātiō' to 'Presentation'

In its essence, a presentation is the act of presenting or displaying information or ideas to an audience. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "the action or process of presenting something to someone." In Latin, the term stems from 'praesentātiō', denoting the action of placing before or showing. This definition has broadened in modern English to encompass various methods of showcasing information, whether it's a business pitch, an academic lecture, or introducing a new product.

The term has its origins in Latin ('praesentātiō'), evolving through various languages like French and British English, symbolizing the act of presenting, displaying, or giving something to others.

Diverse Formats for Different Needs

Presentations can vary in formats - from formal PowerPoint presentations to informal Prez (an informal abbreviation of presentation) discussions, each tailored to suit specific requirements.

Mastering the Art of Presentation

Presentations come in various formats, from the traditional speech to more contemporary multimedia showcases. PowerPoint, a widely used tool, allows the integration of text, images, and graphs to create visually appealing slides. Similarly, Apple's Keynote offers tools for creating impactful multimedia presentations. The inclusion of visual aids, like graphs and charts, enhances comprehension and retention. For those interested in learning Spanish, Arabic, or French, incorporating these languages in presentations can broaden audience reach.

Effective presentation skills involve a blend of clear communication, eye contact , engaging visual aids , and a confident delivery. These skills are crucial in both business and educational settings.

Embracing Technology for Impactful Presentations

In the era of digital communication, tools like multimedia presentations and Apple's Keynote software have become indispensable for creating dynamic and interactive presentations.

Using Graphs and Visuals Effectively

Effective presentations often include graphs and other visual aids to convey complex information in an easily digestible format, enhancing the audience's understanding.

A Multilingual Perspective

The concept of presentation transcends languages, from English to Arabic , each offering unique nuances in the art of presenting.

Presentation Copy and Beyond

The term also appears in literary contexts, such as a "presentation copy" of a book, and in cultural scenarios like a "breech presentation" in childbirth, where the baby is positioned to exit the birth canal feet first.

Crafting an Impactful Presentation

An effective presentation is more than just delivering facts; it involves engaging storytelling, structured key points , and the ability to connect with the audience.

To deliver an effective presentation, certain skills are paramount. English, being a global lingua franca, is often the preferred language for presentations. However, the ability to present in multiple languages, like Spanish or French, can be a significant advantage.

Eye contact is a crucial skill, establishing a connection with the audience and making the presentation more engaging. Additionally, the ability to read the room and adjust the presentation accordingly is vital.

Interactive elements like quizzes can transform a presentation from a monologue into a dynamic group activity. They encourage participation and can be especially effective in educational settings. Quizzes can also be used in business presentations to gauge audience understanding or to introduce a new product.

Learning Through Presentations

In educational settings, presentations are used as a tool for teaching and assessment, often involving quizzes and interactive sessions to enhance learning.

Exploring Synonyms and the Thesaurus

The thesaurus offers a range of synonyms for 'presentation,' such as exhibition, demonstration, and display, each with slightly different connotations.

Utilizing a thesaurus can enrich presentation language, offering synonyms and example sentences to clarify points. The 'word of the day' concept, often found in English learning resources, can be an interesting addition to presentations, especially in multilingual contexts.

The term 'presentation' also has specialized meanings. In historical contexts, a 'presentation copy' refers to a book or manuscript gifted by the author. In obstetrics, 'breech presentation' denotes a situation where the baby is positioned to exit the birth canal feet or buttocks first. Understanding these specialized definitions enriches the overall grasp of the term.

The Role of Presentation in Business

In business contexts, presentations are crucial for scenarios like introducing a new product , persuading investors, or communicating with stakeholders.

Expanding Vocabulary with 'Presentation'

In language learning, 'presentation' can be a word of the day , helping learners understand its usage through example sentences and pronunciation (notated as /ˌprez.ənˈteɪ.ʃən/ in English).

An effective presentation distills complex information into key points, making it easier for the audience to remember the most important takeaways. Summarization skills are critical in achieving this clarity.

The concept of presentations varies across cultures. In Arabic-speaking countries, the style of presentation might differ significantly from that in English-speaking contexts. The benefice of understanding cultural nuances cannot be overstated, as it can significantly impact the effectiveness of a presentation.

Technology, particularly multimedia, plays a pivotal role in modern presentations. From PowerPoint slides to advanced software like Keynote, the use of technology has revolutionized the way information is presented. The integration of videos, sound, and interactive elements makes presentations more engaging and memorable.

In delivering a presentation, non-verbal cues like eye contact and body language are as important as the spoken content. Maintaining eye contact with the audience establishes a connection and keeps them engaged. Similarly, confident body language can convey authority and enthusiasm.

A great presentation often resembles storytelling. It's not just about relaying facts; it's about weaving a narrative that resonates with the audience. This involves understanding the audience's needs and interests and tailoring the content accordingly.

Presentations are often the first introduction of a new product to the market. The effectiveness of these presentations can make or break the product's success. Highlighting the unique features and benefits in a clear, compelling manner is crucial.

The Power of Presentation

Presentations are a powerful tool for communication and education. Whether in a formal business setting or an informal educational environment, mastering the art of presentation can lead to more effective and impactful communication.

1. Oxford English Dictionary

2. Merriam-Webster Thesaurus

3. Apple Keynote User Guide

4. Presentation Techniques in Educational Literature

Pricing: Free to try

Speechify Studio is a comprehensive creative AI suite for individuals and teams. Create stunning AI videos from text prompts, add voice overs, create AI avatars, dub videos into multiple languages, slides, and more! All projects can be used for personal or commercial content.

Top Features : Templates, text to video, real-time editing, resizing, transcription, video marketing tools.

Speechify is clearly the best option for your generated avatar videos. With seamless integration with all the products, Speechify Studio is perfect for teams of all sizes.

## Frequently Asked Questions About Presentations

### What is in a presentation?

A presentation typically includes a combination of spoken words and visual aids such as PowerPoint slides, graphs, or multimedia elements. It's an organized way to convey information or ideas to a group of people.

### What is meant by giving a presentation?

Giving a presentation refers to the act of presenting information or ideas to an audience. This act, known in various languages including English, Spanish, and French as 'presentation' (or 'praesentātiō' in Latin), involves communication skills, visual aids, and sometimes interactive elements like quizzes.

### What makes a good presentation?

A good presentation effectively communicates key points, engages the audience through eye contact and clear speech (often practiced as a 'word of the day' in English classes), uses visual aids like graphs, and is well-structured. Effective presentation skills are crucial for this.

### What are the types of presentation?

There are various types of presentations, including formal business presentations (often using PowerPoint or Keynote), educational lectures, sales pitches for a new product, and informal talks. Each type uses different formats and approaches.

### What are the 4 parts of a presentation?

The four main parts of a presentation are the introduction, the main body, the conclusion, and the Q&A session. Each part plays a vital role in delivering an effective presentation.

### What are the three things that a good presentation should do?

A good presentation should inform, engage, and persuade or inspire the audience. It's about more than just delivering facts; it's an act of communication that can change perspectives or encourage action.

### How is a presentation linked with multimedia?

Presentations often use multimedia elements like videos, audio clips, and animated graphs to enhance the viewer's understanding and engagement. Multimedia tools like PowerPoint and Keynote are widely used in creating dynamic presentations.

### How long should a presentation be?

The length of a presentation can vary, but it's typically between 15 to 30 minutes. The duration depends on the context and the amount of information to be covered. It's important to keep presentations concise to maintain the audience's attention.

These answers incorporate various aspects of presentations, including their definition, formats, and the skills required, in multiple languages and contexts, as seen in resources like Oxford dictionaries and thesaurus.

AI Maker: Everything you need to know!

ChatGPT 5 Release Date and What to Expect

Cliff Weitzman

Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.

Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

• Researcher Training & Development
• Self-Access Resources
• Communication Skills

Making a Presentation

The most important thing about presenting is to remember it is about communication, so always make conveying your message a priority. The following sections are designed to help you think about how to do that.

This guide is intended to work alongside and complement the division's face to face course on  Introduction to Presentation Skills . The slides from the course are available and, among lots of valuable information, include some very useful advice on presenting virtually. 

• Download the Presentation Skills course slides as a PDF . If you require the slides in a different format, please contact [email protected]

If you are going to present virtually, make sure you are comfortable with the software you are going to use, and that you practise - not just delivering your presentation, but also practised with the technology.

See also some hints and tips for virtual presentations , and this course on online presentations  from IT Services.

Introduction

Giving a talk – making a presentation – is such a practical activity that it seems strange to be writing an online guide. Nevertheless there are many useful hints and tips, and exercises, that we can include here to help you prepare for and practice your presentations.

Please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just reading about making presentations will make you a good presenter. It won’t! Learning to make effective presentations is an entirely practical process. So if you are unable to attend a face to face course, make sure you engage with the practical suggestions included in the course slides (see link above) and these webpages. Get together with friends / colleagues to carry out the exercises and discuss the questions included here.

The Good and the Bad

Making presentations is a day to day part of working in academia. It is very easy to fall into the trap of believing that because you know your stuff, you do not need to think about how to go about presenting it effectively. The content – your knowledge – will speak for itself.

Take a moment to think about that. Can you think of a talk you attended where the speaker clearly knew their topic but did not present it well? How much of the subject matter did you absorb / retain?

Answer the same questions about the really effective presentations you have experienced.

With those presentations in mind, make a note of what made them awful / effective / memorable (memorable in both good and bad ways). Think about:

• What aspects of the content did the presenter focus on?
• How well was the content tailored and structured for the audience?
• How was it presented – All talk? All powerpoint? Other audio-visual tools? Involving the audience?  What else?
• How was the timing?
• How did the presenter come across? Confident? Knowledgeable? Engaging?
• What did the presenter do? Look at the audience or elsewhere? Speak clearly? How was their body language?

Preparation

‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’ Benjamin Franklin.

So make sure you prepare thoroughly. Poor preparation makes a poor presentation. Try using this framework for your preparation: 

Setting objectives for your talk - download as a PDF

Selecting and structuring your content - download as a PDF

Getting it off the page / screen - download as a PDF

View the Framework for Presentations as a webpage

THE MOST IMPORTANT thing you must do in preparation for your talk is to rehearse it . The commonest mistake people make is to think that because they know in their head what they are going to say, they don’t need to practice the talk.

In fact you will find that once you start saying the words out loud, it is very different to the way it sounded in your head.

So rehearse , rehearse, rehearse .

Start by doing it by yourself, then get a friend or friends to listen and give you constructive feedback.

Then time your talk . How many talks have you attended that have overrun? How is that? In very few cases is it ok for a talk to overrun its allotted time. Far better to finish a little ahead of time, so as part of your rehearsing make sure you know how long your talk will take.

Delivering your talk and managing nerves

The slides from the division's face to face Presentations Course include a really valuable section on delivering your talk and managing nerves (see link above). See too these Delivery hints and tips - download as a PDF , or view delivery hints and tips as a webpage .

You might also find it interesting to have a look at Amy Cuddy’s TED talk and research on how our posture influences our confidence. 

Other Resources

LinkedIn Courses:

Overcoming your Fear of Public Speaking

Own your Voice: Improve Public Speaking Skills

Communicating with Confidence

Public Speaking: Energize and engage your Audience

Master Confident Presentations

On this page

Speech vs. presentation: What’s the difference?

• Written by: Joby Blume
• Categories: Visual communication , Industry insights
• Comments: 6

What’s the difference between a presentation and a speech? Many people use the words interchangeably, but there are two main areas of difference according to the dictionary definitions. Whether one accepts the dictionary definition is another matter – my four year-old daughter sometimes refuses – but that makes further discussion pretty difficult.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a speech is defined as:

a formal address or discourse delivered to an audience

According to the Scrabble fan’s choice – the Collins English Dictionary – a speech is:

a talk or address delivered to an audience

Note that in the Collins definition, the part about being formal is missing.

Presentation

Both the Oxford English and Collins dictionaries define presentation as including some sort of visual element. The OED definition is:

a speech or talk in which a new product, idea, or piece of work is shown and explained to an audience

Note that this includes the word ‘shown’. The Collins definition is even clearer in explicitly mentioning the use of illustrative material:

a verbal report presented with illustrative material, such as slides, graphs, etc

The Collins Dictionary also notes how the word presentation is used more generally to talk about how things are  shown – ‘ the manner of presenting, esp the organization of visual details to create an overall impression’.

Presentations and speeches

Does the distinction hold perfectly? No. Firstly, people use the terms interchangeably, so of course the real world is full of speeches that are called presentations and presentations that are called speeches. Which leads to a natural blurring of the boundaries. Second, some presentations are very formal indeed, and some set-piece speeches (e.g. The State of the Union Address ) can have visuals added to them but without the orator interacting with them.

The boundaries aren’t sharp. But, according to the definition, a speech is a talk or address, and a presentation is a talk  with the use of some sort of visual aid. 

Speech vs. presentation

Why does this matter? Because giving a speech – for a lot of people – seems harder than giving a presentation. Bad slides are actually worse than no slides . But the reason so many speakers want slides or props is because they find it too hard to deliver speeches, and because effective visual aids makes it easier for them to get their points across.

Effective visuals – that  support  a speaker – make delivering presentations easier than delivering speeches for most people. Not everyone feels they can hold an audience with simply the sound of their own voice.

Great speeches are, well… great. But they aren’t the same as presentations, and shouldn’t be held up as examples of what those giving presentations should emulate.

P.S. For more on words and definitions, see Meaning and Necessity by Saul Kripke.

Related articles

Presentation agency or marketing agency.

• Industry insights

In the agency world, it’s fair to say that PowerPoint design sits somewhere at the bottom of the pile. Working with a specialist presentation design company will generally deliver better results, with less effort, and typically at lower cost. So why do some companies still not use presentation agencies for slide design?

How to make the ULTIMATE sales presentation

• Sales presentations / Sales messaging / Visual communication
• Comments: 8

Sales presentations are the cornerstone of many companies’ sales efforts, yet so often they aren’t given the time and attention they deserve. Thrown together at the last-minute, often your sales reps stand up in front of a sales presentation that's nothing more than a glorified page of notes. Read this article for everything you need to make the ultimate sales presentation.

Choosing a presentation design agency

• PowerPoint design / Visual communication / Industry insights
• Comments: 2

Choosing a presentation design agency for your enterprise is a lot harder than buying a product. With presentation design services, you don’t know what you’re going to get until the project is nearly finished. What you get from the studio isn’t the exact same thing as what any other business ends up with. So how do you choose the right presentation design firm for your company?

This is very interesting. I do appreciate it.

well… i found this information very useful,,,, thanks

This has helped me with my assignment thanks a lot

It is useful information it helps me doing anassignment.thanks

Deference between speech and presentation

Speech Vs Presentation Vs Debate Compitation? Speech: Speech Eleborate In Your Ideas That You Have Crammed(Ratafication). Presetation:To Suggest Anything Infront Of All Student By Using Your Slides Its Own Way That You Have Worked For Project. Debate Compitation:To Disscuss Your Ideas With One Another..

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment.

Join the BrightCarbon mailing list for monthly invites and resources

Thank you for today’s PowerPoint productivity masterclass. I’ve learned so much from BrightCarbon when it comes to PowerPoint. If there isn’t a BrightCarbon fan club already, I’ll be happy to start one! Kimm Babo Wegmans Food Markets

• The Open University
• Guest user / Sign out
• Study with The Open University

My OpenLearn Profile

Personalise your OpenLearn profile, save your favourite content and get recognition for your learning

About this free course

Become an ou student, download this course, share this free course.

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

1 What does communication mean?

In the Oxford English Dictionary , communication is described as ‘The transmission or exchange of information, knowledge, or ideas, by means of speech, writing, mechanical or electronic media’ (OED, 2019).

This shows four speech bubbles in different colours.

Two main types of communication are widely recognised and discussed in both business and academic literature:

• Verbal communication, which includes both oral and written.
• Non-verbal communication, e.g. facial expressions, body language etc.

You’ll learn more about these different communication types as you progress through the course. As a starting point, the following activity will give you the opportunity to reflect on when you’ve experienced them in both a positive and a negative way in the workplace.

Activity 1 My experience

Think of one example of good communication and one of bad communication that you have experienced in a work situation. Try to remember who it was with, how the information was delivered and how it made you feel.

List in the box below the reasons why you think one exchange went well and the other didn’t. Where the communication process wasn’t effective, consider what could have been done differently to improve it.

When considering the positives and negatives of each interaction, did you focus on behaviours/facial expressions etc., or was it the language that was used that caused the exchange to go well or badly?

If you chose an example of written communication, for example an email, the relative success of the interaction will be linked to the words and tone used. Perhaps a friendlier tone, or closer attention to the details, could have improved the situation. Or maybe those elements were well done and made you feel positive.

In an oral exchange, it isn’t just about the words that are used, but the way they are delivered, the attitude of the deliverer etc. A smile and good eye contact can go a long way towards delivering a positive experience.

You’ll explore non-verbal and written communication in more detail later in the course.

In the workplace, developing effective communication skills will enable you to interact more effectively with colleagues and customers, as well as improving your chances of gaining promotion or securing new employment.

There is also significant evidence, from the 1970s onwards, to support a link between effective communication in the workplace and enhanced job satisfaction. Clampit and Girard (1993) analysed the construct of communication satisfaction and concluded that:

… communication satisfaction factors provide an effective way to distinguish between employees who are in the upper and lower parts of the spectrum in terms of both job satisfaction and self-estimates for productivity.

More recently, a study of nurses in paediatric intensive care units – a particularly high-pressure working environment – also concluded that ‘There is a relationship between effective communication and job satisfaction that needs to be of a greater importance for organizations to achieve a higher success’ (Ibrahim et al., 2013).

It makes sense that if those around you are communicating effectively and you have a clear sense of what is expected of you and how you can contribute in the workplace – you are likely to feel more satisfied.

In the next section, you’ll explore what organisations can gain from effective communication.

• presentation

: an activity in which someone shows, describes, or explains something to a group of people

: the way in which something is arranged, designed, etc. : the way in which something is presented

: the act of giving something to someone in a formal way or in a ceremony

Full Definition of PRESENTATION

First known use of presentation, related to presentation, other business terms, rhymes with presentation, definition of presentation for kids, medical definition of presentation, learn more about presentation.

• presentation copy
• presentation piece
• presentation time
• breech presentation
• face presentation

Seen & Heard

What made you want to look up presentation ? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).

• Spanish Central
• Learner's ESL Dictionary
• WordCentral for Kids
• Visual Dictionary
• SCRABBLE ® Word Finder
• Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
• Britannica English - Arabic Translation
• Nglish - Spanish-English Translation
• Advertising Info
• Dictionary API
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use
• About Our Ads
• Browser Tools
• The Open Dictionary
• Browse the Dictionary
• Browse the Thesaurus
• Browse the Spanish-English Dictionary
• Browse the Medical Dictionary

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Politics and Law
• Politics of Development
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

34 Description and Prescription in Dictionaries

Lynda Mugglestoneis Professor of History of English at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. She has published widely on the history of the English, and on the social, cultural, and ideological issues that dictionary-making can reveal). Recent books include Lexicography and the OED. Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest (Oxford University Press, 2002), ‘Talking Proper’. The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol (Oxford University Press, 2007), Lost for Words. The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (Yale University Press, 2005), The Oxford History of English _(Oxford University Press, 2008) and Dictionaries. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2011). She is currently writing a book on Samuel Johnson.

• Published: 07 March 2016
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

In linguistics, descriptivism and prescriptivism are commonly depicted as antonyms. Dyads of objectivity and subjectivity, evidence-based analysis vs. the pull of opinion, and impartial engagement vs. the idiosyncrasies of individual response recur repeatedly. Yet prescription and description can be placed in markedly asymmetric relation. Being descriptive is made part of the legitimate practice of linguistic response. Prescriptivism is both delegitimized and devalorized. Such demarcations prove interestingly complex in lexicography, where descriptive and prescriptive can co-exist within a single work (or even a single entry). The point at which descriptivism shades into prescriptivism can be difficult to locate. Descriptive processes of collection and evaluation of evidence can be accompanied by prescriptive (and proscriptive) reservation. While a historical trajectory from prescriptive to descriptive can be identified, this exhibits unexpected configurations, especially if moral and cultural prescriptivism are considered. These issues are examined as reflected in English dictionaries, especially the Oxford English Dictionary .

34.1 Introduction

In linguistics, descriptivism and prescriptivism are commonly depicted as antonyms. ‘The emphasis on objectivity’ and ‘systematicness’ in descriptivism, Crystal’s Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics notes, ‘places it in contrast with PRESCRIPTIVE aims’; ‘the aim of descriptive linguistics is to describe the facts of linguistic usage as they are, and not how they ought to be, with reference to some imagined state’ ( Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics s.v. description). Being descriptive is what prescriptivism is not—and vice versa. ‘Linguists today understand their job as that of description, their purpose being to describe how people use language, not to prescribe how they should use it’, Kolln and Funk (2002: 4) affirm.

Dyads of objectivity and subjectivity, of evidence-based analysis versus the pull of opinion, and of impartial engagement set against the idiosyncrasies of individual response repeatedly recur in such accounts. Yet, rather than forming simple oppositions, prescription and description can thereby be placed in markedly asymmetric relation. Being descriptive is made part of the legitimate practice of linguistic response. Prescriptivism is, in contrast, both delegitimized and devalorized: ‘Prescription tries to change language by proscribing some forms that are in fact used and prescribing alternatives, where description accepts all forms that are used’, writes Richard Hudson (2010: 59) . If descriptivism deals in facts, prescriptivism veers, in this light, towards the fictional—the ‘imagined standards’ (Crystal Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics s.v. prescriptive) to which correct usage should necessarily conform.

Such demarcations prove interestingly complex when we turn to lexicography where descriptive and prescriptive can co-exist within a single work (and, indeed, at times within a single entry). The precise point at which descriptivism shades into prescriptivism can at times be difficult to locate. Descriptive processes of collection and evaluation of evidence can be accompanied by prescriptive (and proscriptive) reservation. While a general trajectory from prescriptive to descriptive can be identified in the history of dictionary-making, even this exhibits unexpected configurations, especially if agendas of moral and cultural prescriptivism are brought into consideration.

That dictionary-making is perhaps, of necessity, ‘regulative’ was stressed, for example, by Derwent Coleridge (uncle of the dictionary’s first editor) in the early stages of the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) project. ‘The office of a Dictionary, a unilingual Dictionary more especially, is eminently regulative—regulative in effect, though declarative in form’, Coleridge (1860: 156) reminded his audience at the Philological Society. The dictionary-maker is engaged in the construction of a reference model, a didactic text which must, by its nature, engage with recommended norms—of meaning, of spelling, of lexical use. An ‘element of normativity’, Ladislav Zgusta similarly affirms (here with reference to what he terms the ‘standard-descriptive dictionary’) will always co-exist with the specification of ‘what is generally regular, normal, what is the norm’ (1971: 211).

The basis of such judgements—of what is deemed ‘normal’ in terms of both norms and normativity—is of critical import in assessing descriptivism and prescriptivism (and their interplay) within lexicographical history and practice. As this chapter will explore, linguistic response as manifested in dictionaries is subject to a variety of factors which may affect the form and shape of the eventual entry, and the interpretative slant adopted in a given work or by a given editor. Reception too offers other aspects of the contiguities which description and prescription can, in reality, reveal. ‘How do you spell disyllabic dissyllabic ?’, James Murray, editor (1878–1915) of the OED asked, drafting this entry in 1885. Only one, in the pragmatics of the dictionary text, could appear as headword; the other must appear as a secondary and variant form. But, as Murray acknowledged, ‘recent events … have shown that people will not be content to let me be purely historical; they will take me by force, & make me a king orthographically’. Descriptive statements could, as he was aware, be translated into prescriptive edicts in the act of reading the dictionary. In Coleridge’s terms, the dictionary became regulative, even in the act of being intentionally descriptive. ‘I have to consider responsibilities’, Murray continued; ‘if I give a preference to Disyllable, multitudes will follow the standard’ and while ‘I prefer disyllable for my own practice … [I]‌ have no desire to pass an Act of Uniformity’ (MP/4/1/1885). 1

34.2 The Nature of Authority

As Murray’s letter confirms, assumptions about lexicographical authority can themselves occupy conflicted territory. On one hand is the authority of evidence, on the other the presumed authority of the lexicographer. Each, in different ways, can inform the decisions made in shaping the published entry. Proper consideration of the former underpins the ideal of an authoritative dictionary. Here the information presented is well-founded, based on the judicious (and descriptive) analysis of the range of evidence available at the time of the dictionary’s composition. For disyllable , for example, while <ss> and <s> spellings were attested in the assembled evidence for the OED , the fact that distributional patterns 2 revealed an increasing preference for the latter influenced the headword order ( disyllable, dissyllable ) which was eventually chosen for the published entry. The relationship of prescriptive dictionary-maker to evidence is somewhat different. In this context, the intended authority of the dictionary-maker is superimposed on the facts of usage, discounting or marginalizing its significance. ‘It is a vulgar and gross error’ to use expect ‘in speaking of the past; as, I expect the mail has arrived’, Chauncey Goodrich hence declared in the 1862 edition of Webster’s Dictionary . The meaning is rejected, irrespective of supporting evidence. The dictionary-maker in such configurations moves towards the authoritarian, imposing his or her view on the patterns of usage, and discarding—at least in terms of the dictionary entry—what does not, for whatever reason, meet with approval.

Even descriptive dictionaries such as the OED can occasionally display partialities of this kind. Henry Bradley’s editing of expect reveals a level of disapprobation which accords with that expressed by Goodrich (it is a ‘misuse’ which is ‘very common in dialectal, vulgar, or carelessly colloquial speech’, the entry declares). Quantitative and qualitative are divorced; what is ‘common’ may be deemed ‘careless’ (against the implied ‘carefulness’ of conservative speakers who may not exhibit the change in question). Markedly evaluative diction confirms the presence of prescriptivism, here alongside the descriptive facts which the entry also provides. Murray’s insistence that rime (and not rhyme ) was ‘intrinsically the best’ spelling—and should therefore be used throughout the dictionary—provides a similar example. While, as he admitted, rime was not ‘at present favoured by the preponderance of usage’ (1884: x), etymology—and the pull of history—intentionally justified the policy (and underlying model of correctness) adopted. Rhyme was ahistorical; its etymologically motivated spelling disguised the fact that the word had entered Middle English as rime, ryme via French rime , rather than directly from Latin rhythmu s. Usage and correctness are placed at odds in a clear conflict of descriptive and prescriptive principle.

Close examination of behind the scenes evidence from the making of the OED further illustrates the complexities of descriptive and prescriptive process in this respect. For William Craigie, who would edit this section of the dictionary in the early twentieth century, the authority of evidence was paramount, and he drafted the text accordingly. ‘ Rhyme is, and has been for at least two centuries, the standard spelling’, he wrote. ‘Some … derivatives do not occur at all with the spelling rim -, others very rarely’; as he argued, to put these under a headword rime would ‘expose one to a charge of misrepresenting facts’ (MP/18/5/1908). Rhyme (rather than rime ) duly appeared in headwords and definitions alike. Models of a different kind were, however, conspicuous in Murray’s response. ‘It was settled long ago … that the Dictionary spelling should be rime ’, he countered; ‘anarchy’ would be introduced by the preferential selection of rhyme (MP/22/5/1908). In the revisions which Craigie was subsequently made to impose, rhymeless was defined as ‘without rime; unrimed’, rhymeful as ‘abounding in rimes’, rhymer as ‘one who makes rimes’, and so on. These were, moreover, supported by quotations such as Southey’s ‘Should not rhymeless odes be as harmonious as possible?’, or Swinburne’s ‘Written in blank verse, or at least in rhymeless lines’ (my emphases).

‘I am quite prepared to defend the action publicly, whereas I could offer no defence of the practice which occurs in the made-up sheet’, Murray stated of Craigie’s original text. Whether this is—descriptively—true is, however, a moot point. Craigie had merely made use of empirically substantiated evidence; rhyme , in terms of distribution, was clearly the dominant variant by 1908, hence his own ‘defence’ of the lexicographical practice deployed. The changes instituted instead embody what Hudson (Section 34.1 ) identified as the classic territory of prescriptive action, in the attempted preservation of particular ‘standard’ forms against the proscription of others. Letters which Murray received during the process of making the dictionary make the descriptive disparities at stake still more apparent. ‘To hear bicycle made to rhyme (you say rime ) with icicle, distresses me’, James Dixon wrote in 1886 (my emphases)—even if in so doing he merely brought other notions of correctness into the lexicographical foreground.

Such insights from behind the scenes remind us that dictionary-making is a process of interpreting as well as gathering information. Precisely how, and why, different interpretations are proposed and accepted can be critical in influencing the particular trajectories which a dictionary can reveal. Even in the OED revisions under disyllabic , for instance, the complexities of descriptive/prescriptive boundaries (and the obligations which Coleridge’s ‘regulative’ practice suggest) are disturbingly transparent. If the descriptive case for disyllable was undoubted, evidence on disyllabic in the dictionary’s citation files pointed in precisely the opposite direction. Given with <s> in the published text (in the interests of orthographical consistency with related words), it was the <ss> of dissyllable which was uniformly attested in the underlying quotations. In this section of the text, was the dictionary descriptive or prescriptive or both?

34.3 Control and Correctness

The fact that rhyme and not rime has—in spite of Murray’s asseverations—remained the dominant variant suggests, of course, the limits of a dictionary’s authority. Popular convictions about the relationship of dictionary to language nevertheless often assume that the dictionary represents a form of linguistic government, its entries offering edicts to be obeyed. Such political metaphors can, in fact, be highly illuminating. Does usage offer an image of ‘anarchy’ and unregulated change, as, for instance, Lord Chesterfield suggested in 1754, advocating the claims of Johnson’s Dictionary to constrain and control diversity? More to the point, to what extent can the lexicographer also be a dictator, as in Chesterfield’s projected submission to whatever Johnson might propose (‘We must have recourse to the old Roman expedient in times of confusion, and chuse a dictator. Upon this principle I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous post. And I hereby declare that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free-born British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship’ ( Boulton 1971 : 97))? What are the rights of democracy—the language of the majority—in such a view?

For Chesterfield, as for a number of earlier writers, lexicography’s rightful role was to provide a correct (and corrected) ‘standard’ of the language. Existing works, he noted, merely confirmed the abdication of proper prescriptive responsibility: ‘The injudicious reader may speak, and write as inelegantly, improperly, and vulgarly as he pleases, by and with the authority of one or other of our word-books ’ ( Boulton 1971 : 96). In the model Chesterfield advances, ‘superior’ dictionaries are selective and interventionist, exclusive and evaluative.

Rather than documenting the realities of supra-local practice (as a descriptive engagement with standardization might suggest), such assumptions about ‘standard’ use centre on the imposition of uniformity, correctness, and control, with the dictionary as agent of active linguistic reform. Academy discourses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries acted, for instance, as prominent conduits for a shared emphasis on linguistic and lexicographical regulation. The Vocabulario of the Italian Accademia della Crusca (literally, ‘the academy of the bran’) made its concerns with sifting and winnowing language particularly explicit; if the ‘bran’ is retained, the chaff of language—that deemed of less or lower value—is intentionally discarded. The Académie française made manifest similar imperatives with regard to ‘pur usage’ in French.

Such models established a popular image of lexicographical process, by which the language is not to be represented per se, but is instead to be manifested as it ought to be, emblematizing ‘good’ or ‘best’ usage alone. As McArthur comments (1995: 382) , dictionaries tend to display a high degree of ‘psychological fit’ with the dominant linguistic ideologies of the period in which they are composed. Renaissance writers in Britain readily responded to the potential for reform of the vernacular language which lexicography apparently offered. ‘Why should not wee have such an excellent Dictionarie to shew the nature and propertie of our English speech, as learned and laborious Nicot hath made, shewing the utiltie and use of the French tongue’, as George Snell (1649: 36) stressed, for example. 3 A dictionary of this kind, he urged, would establish English as ‘a settled, certain, and corrected language’ (1649: 35). Like Latin, English could attain a classical and invariant grandeur: ‘The language of our Land, thus brought to a fixed and immutable state … will not, as in former ages, so alter out of date and knowledg … wee shall reap all the same profits and advantages that wee see the glorious Romans have gotten … all nations will esteem and honor the English-tongue next to the Latine’ (1649: 40–1).

Often neglected in the history of English dictionaries, Snell’s work offers a persuasive image of prescriptive (and proscriptive) lexicography. Chesterfield’s hopes for the ‘lawful standard of our language’ which Johnson’s work would provide were similar. Yet, even in the eighteenth century, critical readings of prescriptive control can emerge. As Johnson pointed out in his ‘Preface’ ( Dictionary of the English Language , 1755 : sig.C2r), there was in fact ‘no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability’; the lexicographer who believes that ‘his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay’ merited derision rather than praise. As Johnson confessed, ‘Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition’. Yet, as nine years’ work on the Dictionary confirmed, any ‘opposition’ which lexicography might provide is constrained by the very nature of a living language, and the essential ‘liberty’ (1755: sig.C2v) of its speakers. ‘Neither reason nor experience’ could, in reality, justify trying to give ‘longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be immortal’ (1755: sig.C2v). French, as Johnson pointed out, had continued to change in spite of the ministrations of an Academy; the Dictionnaire was revised in response to a changing language, not the other way round. Control, in this respect, was clearly an illusion.

At least in part, Johnson here confounds McArthur’s maxims of ‘psychological fit’, moving away from prescriptive resolution even in the act of drawing his dictionary to a close. His Dictionary witnesses both descriptive and prescriptive impulses. The ‘Preface’, written at the end of the dictionary process, attests conclusions which stress the fallibilities of prescriptive belief. These differ markedly from the ambitious ‘design’ of purifying discourse with which the project began. Nevertheless, entries within the dictionary proper can indeed manifest the kind of resistance to change and innovation which Chesterfield (and Johnson’s publishers) expected. Change in progress in precarious is proscribed (‘no word is more unskilfully used than this’, Johnson declares); semantic divisions are neatly separated into legitimate and otherwise (‘It is used for uncertain in all its senses; but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others’). Usage and correctness divide. Roundabout ‘is used as an adjective … by a colloquial license of language, which ought not to have been admitted into books’, writes Johnson, providing evidence of usage and language attitudes alike. Collocations such as ‘most peculiar’ are deemed ‘improper’. More typical, however, is Johnson’s careful engagement with the quotation evidence he assembled for his dictionary which provides the basis of, say, his rigorous analysis of phrasal verbs (113 senses under take , 66 under put ). If Johnson is often made to emblematize the prescriptive lexicographer at work, in reality a spectrum or continuum of response appears in his Dictionary in which usage (the reality of language practice) is often descriptively given its due.

As the sociolinguist Peter Trudgill (1999: 125) points out, a ‘standard’ is, in reality, by no means reducible to ‘a set of a prescriptive rules’ which articulate norms of correctness removed from what speakers habitually do. Trudgill’s linguistically informed analysis of standardization importantly enables the links between lexicography and standard varieties to be established with greater clarity. A ‘reliable dictionary’, Atkins and Rundell (2008) state, is ‘one whose generalizations about word behaviour approximate closely to the ways in which people normally use (and understand) language when engaging in real communicative acts’ (2008: 45). In this respect, a ‘standard’ (and the lexicographical description of such) is located in the consensus norms of a national speech—in all its contextual variation. To configure a ‘standard’ in the evaluative diction of good and bad, ‘vulgar’ and ‘erroneous’ (especially when this runs counter to the directions of language practice) places lexicography in far more problematic territory. As always, the conjunction of evidence and interpretation is key.

34.4 Patrolling the Borders

What is (or is not) included in a given dictionary presents other opportunities for prescriptive/ descriptive conflict. (Compare Diamond, this volume.) No dictionary, however descriptive, can include all words and meanings. Even OED1 , intended as an ‘inventory’ of the language ( Trench 1860 : 4) omitted certain words, or categories of word—silencing taboo words, for instance, or the language of contraception (see Burchfield 1989 : 83–109; Mugglestone 2007 ), as well as omitting countless words because of pressures of space and the costs of editing (see Mugglestone 2005 ). In real terms, the pragmatics of publication for a living language constrain full representation; editing a word costs time and money and, in a physical text, space too. Likewise, a static text will necessarily lag behind a language on the move. Words on the margin, as in Burchfield’s (1989: 84–5) discussion of provisional entries such as miticide and mithril in the OED Supplements reveal the problems of choice and selection that lexicography also involves; data, editability, and currency all come into play in determining the admission of a word or sense.

‘Drawing the line’ can, however, often bring the lexicographer into highly conflicted territory. The recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary , with its omission of Empire and monarch , or words associated with Christianity ( aisle, disciple ) in favour of new entries such as MP3 player and broadband provides a useful example. Here the process of revision, intended to bring the dictionary up to date for its target audience, elicited accusations both of excessive descriptivism (an unwarranted pandering to neologism) as well as of proscription and the deliberate silencing of the particular images of traditional British culture. In reality, however, the reorientation of entry-words was driven by the concerns of representativeness, descriptively supported by quantitative data from the Oxford Children’s English Corpus . 4 The documentation of new lexical and semantic items on OED Online can attract similarly charged reactions. ‘The stalwart bastion of language, the Oxford English Dictionary , will now include ♥ and LOL as real words worthy of etymological recording’, wrote the Huffington Post in 2011. ‘Much to the dismay of language purists the internet slang term LOL has been officially inserted into the Oxford English Dictionary ’, the website techimpulsion.com proclaimed: ‘Their dismay gets converted into horror when they find that giving company to LOL is the internet slang OMG !’

Inclusion, as here, is often seen as a prescriptive act of legitimization, as proof that a form has ‘really’ entered the language. As in the Huffington Post ’s assumptions about LOL ’s new-found identity as ‘real word’, the dictionary is seen as conferring sanction and acceptability. Omission can conversely be interpreted as proscriptive silencing. The dictionary-maker is constructed as gate-keeper, momentarily opening up the ‘bastion’ to new members, irrespective of the fact that, in modern evidence-based lexicography, the process runs in precisely the opposite trajectory. Usage—the democracy of words—governs the decision to include or exclude a given word or sense (although the larger a dictionary is, the more it will, of course, be able to include). A range of citations, for example, provide indisputable testimony for the frequency of LOL and OMG in current usage. Worth remembering too is the fact that the citations included within an entry by no means represent the totality of evidence of the dictionary’s disposal. In reality, a far wider engagement descriptively underpins the conclusions drawn.

Conflicted readings of this kind repeatedly surface with reference to neologisms or the spread of loanwords. ‘Men might have no more libertie to write or innovate new language, than is permitted them to stamp and coin monie’, wrote Snell in 1649 (41–2), advocating another aspect of prescriptive and restrictive lexicography. Purism, as such comments indicate, can be a particularly potent prescriptive impulse. While the borders of any language are indeterminate (‘there is absolutely no defining line in any direction’, Murray wrote in the ‘General Explanations’ of the OED (1888: xvii)), notions that a line should be drawn—whether on the grounds of history, or need, or simple and visceral dislike—are commonplace, in lexicographical history and language attitudes alike. Ideas of lexical necessity, for instance, often appear in Johnson’s Dictionary in line with his pointed comments on the ‘folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of the natives’ (1755: sig.B1v)). Recent French loans such as ruse and finesse are deemed unnecessary; included in the dictionary, they are nevertheless placed outside the requirements of the lexicon. Need, however, is a complex mechanism; here Johnson’s prescriptive assessment of ‘need’ (and utility) in terms of existing lexical and semantic fields is, for instance, countered by the realities of ‘need’ as adjudged by users themselves. As the subsequent history of ruse and finesse confirms, loanwords acquire citizenship not through lexicographic sanction but through processes of assimilation where language users rather than lexicographers have the metaphorical last word. Dryden’s introduction of French-derived fraischeur fails to reach mainstream usage not because of Johnson’s proscription (‘A word foolishly innovated by Dryden’) but because, descriptively, writers and speakers continued to prefer ‘freshness’ and ‘coolness’.

Change in progress in terms of new sense divisions can operate in a similar way. Words such as transpire and fortuitous provide interesting snapshots of different patterns of lexicographic response. The semantic split of the former, by which a new sense signifying ‘to happen’ gradually come into widespread use, clearly met interpretative resistance in OED1 , in spite of accompanying evidence from the late eighteenth century onwards. As the entry confirms (‘Misused for: To occur, happen, take place’), it was tempting to see this as simple mistake—as testimony to writers misinterpreting what the word ‘really’ meant. Metalanguage is, as always, a reliable indicator of prescriptive or descriptive response. ‘Misuse’ consigns this sense of transpire , at least intentionally, to the realm of linguistic error, a contravention of accepted norms. Yet, if we look at the range of ‘mis-usages’ presented, they are strikingly widespread, taking us either into the problematic concept of ‘mass error’—or, if we read the same evidence descriptively, into the territory of a newly derived sense-division which was, even in print, already diffusing rapidly.

Similar patterns inform the recording of semantic shift in fortuitous . The American Heritage Dictionary ( AHD ) hence treads a careful line between what is described as its ‘best-established sense’ (‘ “happening by accident or chance.” Thus, a fortuitous meeting may have either fortunate or unfortunate consequences’), the transferred meaning which is ‘often been used in reference to happy accidents’ ( The company’s profits were enhanced as the result of a fortuitous drop in the cost of paper ), and what is given as the ‘more controversial’ meaning ‘lucky or fortunate’ (as in ‘ He came to the Giants in June as the result of a fortuitous trade that sent two players back to the Reds ’). While historical testimony for the latter is given (‘This use dates back at least to the 1920s’), presumably in an attempt to defuse controversy, so too is the evidence of language attitudes (‘it is still widely regarded as incorrect’). As the entry confirms, reconciling descriptive and prescriptive can be challenging, especially in a change in progress where norms of usage and norms of correctness continue to be in conflict. (In AHD5 an updated commentary on changing attitudes over time is substituted here.) As the proofs of OED1 indicate, however, the ‘controversial’ sense of fortuitous has existed for far longer than the editors of AHD suspected—as have attendant language attitudes. A hand-written note by Fitzedward Hall, one of the OED ’s critical readers, on the relevant proof sheet (dated 31 Oct 1896) states: ‘ Fortuitous = fortunate 1799. A gross error, not worth recording, & so not sent’. Hall simultaneously indicated the existence of a new sense, and prescriptively edited it out of the evidence supplied for the dictionary. Modern lexicography strives to achieve a different balance by its emphasis on the facts of usage, as well as documenting (while not endorsing) the sensibilities which such usage may provoke. ‘ Fortuitous tends to be often used to refer only to fortunate outcomes and the word has becomes more or less a synonym for “lucky” or “fortunate” ’, states the relevant entry in the 2010 Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) ; ‘Although this usage is now widespread, it is still regarded by some people as incorrect’.

34.5 The Sources of Evidence

‘The Dictionarist, like an Historian, comes after the Affair; and gives a Description of what has passed’, wrote Ephraim Chambers (1728: xxii) . Long before the OED or Richard Chenevix Trench’s formative lectures of 1857, Chambers articulated the salient precepts of descriptive lexicography. The dictionary-writer must pay attention to the facts of language that already exist—rather than, as for Johnson’s entry for precarious or Goodrich’s for expect , trying to direct current and future usage alike. Nevertheless, even Chambers’s axiom—valid as it is—raises wider questions. Which facts, and how many, are to be taken into account? Are all facts equally valid, or should a line be drawn here as well? The nature (as well as the use) of evidence collected for a dictionary are further important facets of the alignment of dictionary-making with descriptive and prescriptive principles. Quality as well as quantity emerges as a recurrent topos in debates about lexicographical authority, especially in terms of the limits of descriptivism and the legitimization which might (or not) be provided by the non-canonical. ‘Who are we that we should use … graphiology , employed in one sense by Lady Lytton and another by the Daily Telegraph ?’ argued F.J.E. (1900: 547) with reference to evidence in the OED : ‘ Individualic may be an excellent word, but one may never have heard of J. Gilchrist who used in in 1824’. If ‘the Medical News and the British Medical Journal call a person unfit for an operation inoperable ’, are they ‘justified in doing so?’

The fact that dictionary citations were illustrative, attesting usage and currency, rather than exemplary—acting as models with potentially prescriptive force—was, for many, difficult to accept. While their canonicity is undoubted, literary writers such as Shakespeare or Browning are, for example, scarcely representative of ordinary usage, raising questions about their utility to the dictionary-user as illustrative examples, as well as to the dictionary-maker in the attempt to derive meaning. Presuppositions that good writers attested good usage, and that this was what a dictionary should provide nevertheless prove of surprising longevity. Historical precedent was clearly influential in this respect. While modern descriptive lexicography centres on knowing how language is typically used (‘the behavior of each word … in its natural contexts’, the New Oxford American Dictionary (2010) stresses), hierarchical models of data selection commonly underpinned earlier lexicography, as in Abel Boyer’s conviction that ‘best authors’ alone legitimize the language practices on which entries are based. ‘Words … found in any Writer of unsufficient Authority’ are to be marked ‘ Dubious ’ while ‘The English [is] collected chiefly out of the great masters of the English tongue, such as Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Sprat, Sir Roger l’Estrange, Mr. Dryden, Sir William Temple’ ( Royal Dictionary , 1699 : title-page). ‘It will be proper to observe some obvious rules, such as preferring writers of the first reputation to those of an inferior rank’, Johnson (1747: 30–1) likewise affirmed.

The fundamental principle of citations—the gathering of a corpus of evidence—as the basis of descriptive dictionary-making was enshrined by writers such as Franz Passow who saw the citational history of a given word as a prime means by which it could, in effect, tell its own story (compare Considine, this volume). As Herbert Coleridge stressed in his early editorship of the OED , ‘the theory of lexicography which we profess is that which Passow was to the first to enunciate clearly and put into practice successfully—viz., “that every word should be made to tell its own story” ’ ( Trench 1860 : 72). Evidence thereby also becomes the means by which the potential partiality of the dictionary-maker can be excluded. Which story is told will nevertheless depend upon the nature of the evidence collected. Johnson’s strictures, for example, were clearly relaxed in the process of data collection. ‘Words must be sought where they are used’ (1755: sig.B2v), he admitted: ‘Some of the examples have been taken from writers who were never mentioned as masters of elegance or models of stile’. 5 A skewed empiricism, however, often remains in evidence. Literary texts (and male writers) undoubtedly dominate. Crystal’s ‘systematicness’ ( Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics s.v. description)—identified as an important prerequisite of descriptive analysis—is likewise awry. Reading Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy , Johnson marks words such as culminating, partile, gravity , and muck-hill for inclusion. Yet other words in the same text ( horsemill, Painter’s-shop ) are neglected. Johnson’s statements that jeopardy is ‘a word not now in use’ or, under smouldring , that ‘This word seems to be a participle; but I know not whether the verb smoulder be in use’ presumably derive from similarly imperfect acts of reading. Describing language accurately depends upon the nature of the facts to which a dictionary-maker has access, as well as upon the interpretative strategies deployed.

Qualitative considerations—with their underlying agenda of prescriptive and proscriptive response—could also be difficult to eliminate. The validity of newspaper citations were a case in point. As information from the making of the OED confirms, such sources were deemed of incontestable value by Murray. Enabling the dictionary-maker to get much closer to ‘real’ language, ‘they show’, he argued, ‘how the language grows … make visible to us the actual steps which for earlier stages we must reconstruct by inference’ (MP/9/6/1882). The Delegates of Oxford University Press maintained a rather different notion of lexicographical appropriacy: ‘Should not the quotations illustrative of modern literary words be taken from great authors, and the language of newspapers banished?’, they demanded (MP/Meeting/1883). Evidence deriving from popular fiction could also be controversial. Henry Hucks Gibbs (another advisor on OED1 ) condemned the popular Victorian novelist Elizabeth Braddon as ‘hasty’ (‘she grinds out novels by the yard, and does not give herself time to think whether she is writing good English or not’ (MP/3/5/1883)). Similar arguments informed popular response to evidence used by Philip Gove in writing Webster’s Third New International Dictionary . ‘Systematic reading of books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, catalogs, and learned journals’ had provided a wealth of new information with which to describe contemporary American usage, Gove stressed, emphasizing the descriptive value of ‘independent investigation of usage borne out by genuine citations’, whether these derived from actors, journalists, politicians, or more established writers. Gove’s insistence on such quantitative salience was met with qualitative reservation in many reviews (see Morton 1994 ). Yet, as in Gibbs’s censure of Broughton, qualities such as ‘hastiness’ could in fact bring evidence closer to the realities of ordinary language practice— circumventing the artificiality which a closely monitored style can bring. If Gibbs subjectively contested Broughton’s status as ‘authority’ in the processes of lexicography, the argument could clearly be reversed.

Dictionary-making in this respect presents a changing pattern of empirical engagement and evaluative bias. While Murray’s descriptive ideals could, in practice, be challenged, 6 the modern OED , as in its inclusion of doh and OMG , is firmly orientated towards the realities of ordinary—rather than exemplary—usage. Citational evidence from journalism and popular discourse can characterize new entries, as well as revision of older ones. Recent editions of Merriam-Webster attest twenty-first-century blends without resistance—as in staycation, frenemy , and vlog (a video-blog). Modern corpora often eliminate the poetical altogether, while the literary is restricted in comparison to types of data which provide a more rigorous—and balanced—engagement with language as deployed by the majority rather than minority of its users. Collins Dictionaries base their evidence on the Bank of English (over 525 million words of written and spoken English by 2005). As John Sinclair (1987a) stressed in establishing the Cobuild project, the corpus was ‘a device though which the user will observe the living language. Not the frozen fillets of the printed citations, nor the stuffed dummies of the made-up examples, but the language as it is when it is being used’. Frequency scores provide empirical (and indisputable) evidence for currency and change.

34.6 Acts of Interpretation

In Passow’s image of lexical biography, the word, as we have seen, tells its own story. The dictionary-maker merely facilitates the transmission of the facts. ‘The dream of the historical lexicographer is that the quotations chosen will be so apposite, will so accurately reveal the meaning and uses of the words they illustrate, that nothing more will need to be added’, as William Ramson (2002: 15) , editor of the Australian National Dictionary , later wrote. Yet such distancing can, in practice, be problematic. If the data provide the documentary evidence, it is, of necessity, the dictionary-maker who must shape the entry, telling the story, in effect, from a particular point of view.

Cultural prescriptivism—the presenting of norms and images of normativity which are ideologically rather than empirically affirmed—is a further aspect of lexicographical practice which demands scrutiny in this respect. It too can trade on a loaded metalanguage in which notions of acceptability (or otherwise) can come to the fore. ‘A dictionary’, Trench stated in his lectures, is ‘the history of nation documented from one point of view’ (1860: 6). If, on one level, Trench’s words indicate the intersection of language and material culture (the markers of a particular way of life, characteristic of one nation rather than another, together with their associated cultural matrices), it is clear that ‘point of view’ can intervene in ways which also move outside this descriptive remit. Individual point of view can be detected in, say, Johnson’s entry for foxhunter (‘a man whose chief ambition is to shew his bravery in hunting foxes’). More pervasive cultural and ideological positions can be at work elsewhere. Discourses of religious identity can be particularly problematic. Pronominal positioning (and negatively charged diction) in Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary firmly aligns ideal readers with mainstream Christianity (and against Catholicism); see e.g. crucifix : ‘a Figure representing our Saviour on the Cross’; limbus : ‘according to the Notion of the Roman Catholicks … a Place where the deceased Patriarchs resided till the Coming of our Saviour’. Exorcism in Dyche and Pardon’s New General English Dictionary (1735) is a ‘practice, imposing much upon the credulity of their blind adorers’. Similar notions of norm and ‘other’ can appear in OED1 , as under infidelity , which is intentionally explained by the gloss ‘Muhammadanism; heathenism’ or ghazi , defined as ‘a champion against infidels’. The elaboration of the latter (‘In modern use, chiefly applied to Muslim fanatics who have devoted themselves to the destruction of infidels’) is surely ripe for revision. 7

Sex, race, and taboo of various kinds all present similar opportunities for the imaging of cultural norms, whether in the disapprobation evident in Victorian definitions of masturbation (‘the practice of self-abuse’) or the illustrative citations given for tobacco in more recent works (‘Try to do without tobacco and alcohol’, in Cobuild ). The morally loaded diction of earlier texts is, however, now rare. ‘Lust’ (‘chiefly and now exclusively used implying intense moral reprobation’, OED lust sense 4) hence moves outside defining practice in revising pandar ( OED1 : ‘one who supplies another with the means of gratifying lust’: ‘a person who provides another with the means of sexual gratification’ in OED3 ). Prostitution is likewise revised upon factual rather than moral lines ( OED1 : ‘The offering of the body to indiscriminate lewdness’; OED3 : ‘the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment’). Configurations of ‘unnaturalness’ in the defining strategies for words such as tribade ( OED1 : ‘A woman who practices unnatural vice with other women’) present a further case in point. Cultural proscription articulated the boundaries of ‘natural’ and ‘normal’, legitimizing heterosexuality above homosexuality, and sexual continence above sexual activity. Tribade : ‘A woman who engages in sexual activity with other women; a Lesbian’, OED3 now states. As here, revision for new editions can also mean revising cultural norms and attitudes which the nuances of definition have hitherto expressed, and displacing prescriptivism with intentionally neutral description in this respect as well. Yet, as Kaye (1989) argues, even corpora do not necessarily resolve such problems of cultural bias. The dictionary-maker must still select examples, as well as decide on definition and the nature and type of sense-division.

The divide of description and prescription can therefore remain complex. Definitions reflect the dominant—and naturalized—ideologies of a given period, elucidating norms which seem ‘normal’ in their own time, whether this is in terms of sexual tolerance or repressiveness. The diction of openness, equality, and sexual tolerance, for instance, articulates relevant socio-cultural norms in modern lexicography, in line with changing social attitudes. Yet those who do not share such positions may also perceive the prescription (and proscription) of particular viewpoints in ways which may perhaps seem equally problematic. Descriptivism and prescriptivism can, in practice, be riven with areas of potential ambiguity and overlap. In the OED ’s attempts to capture the negative semantic prosodies of serviette , for example (‘It may now be regarded as naturalized, but latterly has come to be considered vulgar’), does ‘vulgar’ proscribe, or is it a way of trying (if in a somewhat heavy-handed way) to engage with the socio-cultural matrices of use? Such markers also have potentially dissuasive force, as well as dividing dictionary and dictionary-writer from a set of users who might indeed use serviette —but who would not consign themselves to ‘vulgarity’ as a result.

Absolute neutrality—the objective essence of descriptive lexicography—can therefore be extremely difficult to achieve. To look at the entry for literally , say, in the Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) is to witness the complex juggling required in the attempt to achieve balance, here in representing an often stigmatized pattern of usage. The non-literal sense, as in is ‘I literally died’ is, we are told, ‘very common’ but ‘can lead to unintentionally humorous effects’ which can mean that it is ‘not acceptable in formal contexts’ even though ‘it is widespread’. As this level of detail and specification confirms, the modern sense of a ‘good’ dictionary is clearly distinct from the prescriptive ideals espoused by Snell and Chesterfield. ‘A good dictionary reports the language as it is, not as the editors (or anyone else) would wish it to be’, the New Oxford American Dictionary (2010) avers. If popular language attitudes can still exhibit robust prescriptive allegiances, the dominant trends in dictionary-making have moved to the opposite side of the spectrum. ‘ “Discomfit” does not mean to make uncomfortable’ but ‘means to rout or overwhelm’, a recent article in The Times categorically announced, contesting its use by David Cameron. ‘The words discomfit and discomfort are etymologically unrelated but in modern use their principal meanings have collapsed into one: “make someone feel uneasy” ’, the Oxford Dictionary of English counters, firmly severing descriptive realities and prescriptive fictions. Objectivity displaces subjective response. Telling the story, aided by digital lexicography (and the scale of data analysis which this facilitates), has, in this respect, certainly moved much closer to Passow’s ideals.

Archival Documents

Murray Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford:

MP/9/6/1882. James Murray to Bartholomew Price, 9 June 1882.

MP/Meeting/1883. ‘Report of a Meeting of a Committee of the Delegates Appointed to Consider the English Dictionary’, 10 May 1883.

MP/3/5/1883. Henry Hucks Gibbs to James Murray, 3 May 1883.

MP/4/1/1885. James Murray to Herbert Warren, 4 January 1885.

MP/18/5/1908. William Craigie to James Murray, 18 May 1908.

MP/22/5/1908. Draft of a letter from James Murray to William Craigie.

OED Archives at Oxford University Press:

BL/308/6. James Dixon to James Murray, 20 April 1886.

Archival documents referenced in this chapter are listed at the end of the chapter.

Of the four post-1880 quotations which appear under disyllable (n) in the first edition, three have the dis - form.

Jean Nicot’s Thresor de la langue françoyse was published in 1606, containing 18,000 entries.

See e.g. the response of Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College: ‘I think as well as being descriptive, the Oxford Junior Dictionary has to be prescriptive too, suggesting not just words that are used but words that should be used. It has a duty to keep these words within usage, not merely pander to an audience. We are looking at the loss of words of great beauty. I would rather have “marzipan” and “mistletoe” then “MP3 player”.’ ( Henry 2008 ).

See e.g. John Arbuthnot’s Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments (1731) under alimentary (‘Of alimentary roots, some are pulpy and very nutritious; as, turneps and carrots’), and John Mortimer’s The Whole Art of Husbandry (1707) under fill n. (‘This mule being put in the fill of a cart, run away with the cart and timber’).

Data collection by volunteer readers could lead to over-representation of literary texts, as could the use of concordances to Shakespeare—which record every word in the Shakespeare canon. Likewise pressures of space could mean that newspaper data, often included at the end of an entry, proved particularly vulnerable to the processes of editing out, even if it was considered in the underlying analysis of an entry (see Mugglestone 2005 ).

This entry, taken from OED Online in July 2012, already bears the signs of partial cultural revision, in the displacement of ‘Mohammedan’ (used in OED1 ) by ‘Muslim’.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Words and phrases

Personal account.

• Access or purchase personal subscriptions
• Get our newsletter
• Save searches
• Set display preferences

Institutional access

Sign in with library card

Sign in with username / password

Recommend to your librarian

Institutional account management

Sign in as administrator on Oxford Academic

artificial intelligence noun

• Hide all quotations

What does the noun artificial intelligence mean?

There is one meaning in OED's entry for the noun artificial intelligence . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.

How common is the noun artificial intelligence ?

How is the noun artificial intelligence pronounced, british english, u.s. english, where does the noun artificial intelligence come from.

Earliest known use

The earliest known use of the noun artificial intelligence is in the 1950s.

OED's earliest evidence for artificial intelligence is from 1955, in a text by J. McCarthy et al.

artificial intelligence is formed within English, by compounding.

Etymons: artificial adj. , intelligence n.

Nearby entries

• artificial ear, n. 1597–
• artificial evolution, n. 1901–
• artificial eye, n. 1635–
• artificial gene, n. 1965–
• artificial globe, n. 1625–
• artificial grass, n. 1733–
• artificial gravity, n. 1927–
• artificial horizon, n. 1595–
• artificial hour, n. 1582–
• artificial insemination, n. 1897–
• artificial intelligence, n. 1955–
• artificial island, n. 1775–
• artificialism, n. 1835–
• artificiality, n. c1535–
• artificialize, v. 1801–
• artificialized, adj. 1684–
• artificial kidney, n. 1913–
• artificial language, n. 1705–
• artificial life, n. 1613–
• artificial line, n. 1667–
• artificial lung, n. 1844–

Meaning & use

A proposal for the Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence .

Though computers have been programmed to do certain things..it would be disastrous to extrapolate from these primitive exhibitions of artificial intelligence to something like translation.

Research on pattern recognition is carried out in various areas, for instance, in connection with ‘learning machines’ and ‘ artificial intelligence ’.

The..almost clichéd applications being knowledge-based systems and artificial intelligence programs.

A pioneer in the subdiscipline of artificial intelligence known as natural language processing.

Magna has enlisted the team from the TV programme Robot Wars to make ‘flyborgs’—radio-controlled blimps with artificial intelligence .

Ive never seen a more first world problem than an artificial intelligence refusing to write a poem.

• artificial intelligence 1955– The capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour; the field of study concerned with this. In later use also…
• AI 1963– Artificial intelligence; the capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour; the field of study concerned…
• machine learning 1953– The capacity of computers to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions, by using algorithms and statistical models to analyse and…
• ELINT 1954– The gathering of information for military, security, or other purposes by means of electronic sensing devices; information gathered in this way; = el …
• machine intelligence 1966– = artificial intelligence , n.
• deep learning 1986– A type of machine learning considered to be in some way more dynamic or complete than others; esp. machine learning based on artificial neural…

Pronunciation

• ð th ee
• ɬ rhingy ll

Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence <petal> /ˈpɛtl/ but <petally> /ˈpɛtl̩i/.

• a trap, bath
• ɑː start, palm, bath
• ɔː thought, force
• ᵻ (/ɪ/-/ə/)
• ᵿ (/ʊ/-/ə/)

Other symbols

• The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
• The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
• Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.

View the pronunciation model here .

* /d/ also represents a 'tapped' /t/ as in <bitter>

Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence <petal> /ˈpɛd(ə)l/ but <petally> /ˈpɛdl̩i/.

• i fleece, happ y
• æ trap, bath
• ɑ lot, palm, cloth, thought
• ɔ cloth, thought
• ɔr north, force
• ə strut, comm a
• ər nurse, lett er
• ɛ(ə)r square
• æ̃ sal on

Simple Text Respell

Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U.S. English Simple Text Respell.

b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their standard English values

• arr carry (British only)
• a(ng) gratin
• o lot (British only)
• orr sorry (British only)
• o(ng) salon

artificial intelligence typically occurs about once per million words in modern written English.

artificial intelligence is in frequency band 5, which contains words occurring between 1 and 10 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands

Frequency of artificial intelligence, n. , 1950–2010

* Occurrences per million words in written English

Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.

The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.

For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole , n.¹, mole , n.², mole , n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.

Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.

Compounds & derived words

• AI , n.² 1963– Artificial intelligence; the capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour; the field of study concerned with…

Entry history for artificial intelligence, n.

Originally published as part of the entry for artificial, adj. & n.

artificial intelligence, n. was revised in December 2023.

artificial intelligence, n. was last modified in March 2024.

oed.com is a living text, updated every three months. Modifications may include:

• further revisions to definitions, pronunciation, etymology, headwords, variant spellings, quotations, and dates;
• new senses, phrases, and quotations.

Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into artificial intelligence, n. in March 2024.

Earlier versions of this entry were published in:

A Supplement to the OED, Volume I (1972)

• Find out more

OED Second Edition (1989)

• View artificial, a. (and n.) in OED Second Edition

Please submit your feedback for artificial intelligence, n.

Please include your email address if you are happy to be contacted about your feedback. OUP will not use this email address for any other purpose.

Citation details

Factsheet for artificial intelligence, n., browse entry.

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Explore the Cambridge Dictionary

English dictionaries.

• Learner’s Dictionary
• Essential British English
• Essential American English

Pronunciation

Translation dictionaries.

• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• English–Arabic
• English–Bengali
• English–Catalan
• English–Czech
• English–Danish
• English–Gujarati
• English–Hindi
• English–Korean
• English–Malay
• English–Marathi
• English–Russian
• English–Tamil
• English–Telugu
• English–Thai
• English–Turkish
• English–Ukrainian
• English–Urdu
• English–Vietnamese

Word Scramble

Challenge yourself with word games from Cambridge Dictionary.

Read the definition. Can you beat the clock and spell the word?

Apples and oranges (Talking about differences, Part 2)

Word of the Day

mountain climber

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

a person who climbs mountains as a sport

Popular searches

• 07 schedule
• 08 leverage
• 09 pronunciation
• 10 experience

Browse the English Dictionary

Or, browse the Cambridge Dictionary index

Free word lists and quizzes to create, download and share!

You’re logged in. Start creating a word list or do a quiz!

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists

To add ${headword} to a word list please sign up or log in.

Add ${headword} to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.