Introducing English Linguistics

particular occupation or area of interest. Physicians and lawyers, for
instance, can make use of dictionaries that define medical and legal
terms, such as Tabler’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary or Black’s Law
Dictionary. Musicians can consult dictionaries of musical terms, such
as the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Scrabble players have dic-
tionaries containing words permissible in Scrabble games. Since the
range of interests is large, so are the number of dictionaries catering
to these interests.
Even though many different kinds of dictionaries exist, most individuals
are probably most familiar with abridged or unabridged monolingual dic-
tionaries: the primary focus of discussion in this section. The creation of
a monolingual dictionary is essentially a two-stage process: determining
the meaning of words by studying their use in context, and then crafting
definitions of the words that will be appropriate for the readership of the