People believe that every word has its correct meaning(s). When we are not sure, we usually check online, or turn to our teachers or dictionaries. But do you know how dictionaries were made in the past?
Dictionary writers first read the important books of the period or the subject that the dictionary was about. As they read, they copied necessary information on cards: interesting words, common words—both in their daily uses and unusual uses, and also the sentences where they were used. That is to say, the words, along with the uses of each word, were collected. For a really big dictionary, millions of such cards were collected. This task could last for years. As the cards we recollected, they were put in alphabetical order(A—Z). When this was done, there would be several hundred cards for each single word.
Then, to define(定义)a word, the dictionary writer placed its hundreds of cards before him. He read the cards closely, threw away some, read the rest again, and divided up the cards according to what he thought were the common uses of the word. Finally, he wrote the definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule: each definition must come from an example on a certain card in front of him.
So, the writing of a dictionary was not a task of inventing meanings of words, but a task of recording their meanings. The writer of a dictionary was a historian, not a law maker.
As time develops, the way of producing dictionaries has greatly changed. Nowadays, we can use online dictionaries too. When choosing our words in speaking or writing, we can be guided by the dictionary. However, we cannot be controlled by it, because new situations, new experiences, new inventions, and new feelings are always pushing us to give new uses to old words.
