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Making a North American Dictionary after Avis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Thomas E. Toon
Thomas E. Toon*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

Dr. Johnson impugned his fellow dictionary makers by defining a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. Were a present day dictionary maker to take a Johnsonian editorial liberty and use Walter S. Avis as a personal example in defining lexicographer, that famous definition would need to take a very different form. One would have to include such adjectives as generous, tireless, dedicated, farseeing, and innovative. Avis knew circumstantially that the modern lexicographer can occasionally be elevated above the status of mere “harmless drudge,” but certainly Dr. Johnson could not have been expected to anticipate the kind of dilemma Avis described in “Trade Names, Lexicographers, and the Law” (1978).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 26 , Issue S1 , Spring 1981 , pp. 142 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1981

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Mrs. Laquetta Karch for her careful and diligent help in compiling these data.

References

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