Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

Előszó

Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary has become, over the decades, a national, and in many cases international, institution. Of course this is not to say that the dictionary never changes - far from it. In common with all the best institutions it has evolved and altered with the times. The new edition of the dictionary has been carefully prepared with the demands of the modern age in mind. Each new age brings with it new developments and new attitudes and this is as true of the English language as of anything else. Language is ever-changing. It is, after all, the very substance of communication. As people develop and widen their interests and capabilities, the language develops with them. Dictionaries, which should be faithful recorders of the language, must follow suit. Recent years have seen important new developments in almost every aspect of living and most of these have affected the language in somé way. The dramatically changing worlds of science, medicine and technology, the world of politics, both national and international, the world of industrial relations, even the world of military conflict -all these have made their mark on the words we use. The editors of the new edition of Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary have tried to consider all these developments when making their selection of words to include. The selection of entries for a dictionary has never been an easy task, for space in dictionaries has always been at a prémium. Lexicographers may have linguistic pet hates or loves but to them no word is ever totally unimportant. Deciding which words to include and which to exclude presents great difficulty. With so many additions to the language occurring so rapidly the choice has become ever more difficult and the skill required in making the choice much more important. The chief concern of the modern lexicographer in compiling or updating a dictionary is to record the changes taking place in contemporary English, to include new words and new meanings of old words. It has certainly been one of the major concerns of the editors of this edition of the Twentieth Century Dictionary. However we must give due status and importance to words that have been with us for somé time. We cannot simply sweep away the old and established, the tried and the true, so to speak, to accommodate the new. That would give a very unbalanced impression of the language. Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary has long been remarkable for the extent and breadth of its coverage of the language. It has a long-established tradition of giving full recognition to the literary and archaic as well as to the technical and the new. The new edition has preserved this tradition and so the dictionary remains for its size unparalleled in its comprehensiveness. Generations of users of the dictionary have found this feature invaluable. These include not only students of language and literature but alsó people who love language generally and üke to see how English has developed historically. Modern English has, after all, taken a long time to evolve - it reaches backwards as well as forwards. Vissza