The Problem With Dictionaries II
I often have to look things up in a dictionary or a style guide. I don’t enjoy admitting that, but it’s true. I write books on grammar, writing, and publishing as well as blog posts for several sites. This continual use of those resources has caused me to have a problem with dictionaries (style guides too).
What’s the Problem with Dictionaries?
The problem stems from the fact that most dictionaries seem to go out of their way to be as confusing as possible. More often than not, I’ll find myself looking up another word that the dictionary used to describe the one I was looking for. In a few cases, this went on for three look-ups. Maybe it would be better if I showed you.
While working on one of my grammar books, I felt the need to look up appositive. I went to Merriam-Webster’s, and this is what I found.
- of, relating to, or standing in grammatical apposition
Not thrilled, I looked it up in at Dictionary.com’s site.
- a word or phrase in apposition.
Frustrated, I decided I better look up apposition to ensure I had it explained properly. The following is what I found.
Merriam-Webster
- a grammatical construction in which two usually adjacent nouns having the same referent stand in the same syntactical relation to the rest of a sentence (such as the poet and Burns in a biography of the poet Burns)
Perhaps if I had a PhD in English, I would have grasped that easier, but I don’t. Instead of struggling to understand, I decided to check another dictionary.
Dictionary.com
- the act of placing together or bringing into proximity; juxtaposition.
- the addition or application of one thing to another thing.
- Grammar . a syntactic relation between expressions, usually consecutive, that have the same function and the same relation to other elements in the sentence, the second expression identifying or supplementing the first. In Washington, our first president, the phrase our first president is in apposition with Washington.
Boy, was I glad I did that. It cleared things up a lot.
That experience led me to keep an eye out for explanations of this sort when using dictionaries or style guides.
By the way, dictionary.com could have just said, The act of putting one thing next to the other. If they had provided an example, it would have explained it far better to many, many more people. For example.
An appositive is set off by commas whether it comes at the end of a sentence or midsentence.
- My wife, Mikki, is at the store.
- Our dog, Mollie, is getting old.
Wanting to see if all dictionaries were useless, I looked up apposition at vocabulary.com. The definition provided there was not only reasonable, but valuable.
- When you put two things right next to each other, you can call that apposition. The apposition of your dog and your cat makes an adorable photograph.
I locked away my frustration to help maintain a safe blood pressure and went about my business. It wasn’t until a few nights later that I had another occasion to become unnerved. I was beginning to think I needed to take a few vocabulary courses.
While searching for a good explanation regarding comma usage, and I saw this in the AP StyleBook.
- After an introductory phrase directly referring to the subject. For example, The GABAA receptor agonist muscimol did not influence the response of WDR neurons in normal or allodynic animals.
Here’s a less-confusing one, but not by much (again, by AP).
- To set off contrasted or antithetical phrases or clauses. For example, the greater the risks, the more gratifying will be the results or …had an effect with A, not with B. Could they have found a more difficult explanation? I still don’t know what the hell they were trying to say.
But all of them were topped by the next example. I was writing about the differences between than and then, and I decided I better check all explanations. This is what I found at Merriam-Webster’s.
- — used as a function word to indicate the second member or the member taken as the point of departure in a comparison expressive of inequality — used with comparative adjectives and comparative adverbs
Dictionary.com’s explanation was better, but not by much.
- (used after some adverbs and adjectives expressing choice or diversity, such as other, otherwise, else, anywhere, or different, to introduce an alternative or denote a difference in kind, place, style, identity, etc.):
Almost at my wits’ end, I looked it up using the Longman dictionary. Not only did they provide a simple definition, they used good example sentences.
- used when comparing two things, people, situations etc
- Natalie was prettier than her sister.
- You need that money more than I do.
- There were more people there than I expected.
- If it costs more than $60, I won’t buy it.
This was so flabbergasting, that I need to show it again.
Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition:
- — used as a function word to indicate the second member or the member taken as the point of departure in a comparison expressive of inequality — used with comparative adjectives and comparative adverbs
And here is the one from Longman.
- used when comparing two things, people, situations etc
Bottom Line
Dictionaries aren’t all bad. In my quest to find the ideal one, I’ve run across a few that do a pretty good job of supplying easy-to-understand definitions. Vocabulary.com and the Longman dictionary are two of them.
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