Getting to Know Your Dictionary

The beginning was done in class on Friday of last week.

Front Matter:

Date of publication? Give the most recent.

What other lists does the book contain besides the main word list?

Are there any names in it? Geographical names? Are they in the main list or segregated in a list all to themselves?

What help is given to guide you in word choice? Are there ``usage'' labels?

Where is the key to the pronunciation symbols?

Look up forbid and find out how to spell and pronounce the past tense of it.

What is the significance of the dots within the words in the list?

Pronunciation:

Find two different pronunciations of a word and pronounce them for the class. Each student will be assigned one word:

address, adult, Celtic, coupon, creek, decadent, drama, gibberish, greasy, herb, impotent, leisure, pianist, poinsettia, research, Oedipus.

Each of the following words can be either a noun or a verb, and its pronunciation changes with its word class. Tell how it is pronounced as each different part of speech. Each student will have a different word: confine, conflict, consort, torment, escort, exploit, ferment, impact, import, misuse, refuse, entrance.

__________________________________________________________________________________

To be finished for Wednesday:

Grammar:

Where do you find out what word class a word belongs to? (Is it a noun, a verb, an adjective, etc.?) To see why this might matter, look up court and fly.

Can you find cynic, cynical, and cynicism as separate entries or all under one listing?

Meaning:

If there are both old and new meanings, which comes first? Or does the most common meaning come first? Check cute, shrewd, fulsome, ghastly.

What is the most likely definition of each italicized word, in the context provided by the sentence?

At ten he became a printer's devil.

His fellowship expired at the end of a year.

Luther objected to the sale of indulgences.

She has extremely catholic reading tastes.

They soon discovered that the resort was a white elephant.

Spelling:

What about alternate spellings? Do you find Hallowe'en or only Halloween? How are the spellings gaol and colour labeled? Do you find them at all? (Try jail and color.)