On Dictionaries

Not all dictionaries are authoritative. Not all authoritative dictionaries are authoritative in the same way.  

For most purposes in English classes, your first choice should be the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online; for classes on English before 1500, you’ll have to turn first to the Middle English Dictionary (MED) or the Dictionary of Old English (DOE). You can find instructions on how to access all three dictionaries online using my Resources link in the menu bar at the top of this page (or just click here).

Otherwise, for university English classes, avoid any dictionaries other than the OED, MED, and DOE unless you have a really good and thought-through reason to do otherwise. Never use clickbaity sites like dictionary.com, and never type a word right into Google, to look up words for a university English class.

If you’re looking for a truly quick look-up of the North American usage or spelling of a word, go with Merriam-Webster; never use Merriam-Webster for more sustained readings or close readings, though.

Be very wary of, and generally avoid, apps or online dictionaries made for ESL and EFL speakers: these apps and quick dictionaries are usually made to offer ready-to-hand, simplified meanings of words — and they’re good when that’s what you’re looking for in everyday conversation or, perhaps, in a STEM class — but that kind of ready-to-hand simplification is usually the opposite of what a university English class is looking for.

And even the OED is not the end-all be-all final authority on word meaning — that kind of authority is, thankfully, impossible — as much as it does market itself as “the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium… an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past.”

The OED and MED have many uses, but three of them will serve you particularly well in English classes: definition look-ups, close reading, and etymological research.

The first use is pretty obvious—if, in your reading, you run across a word you do not recognize, look it up! However (this is important): a definition look-up should not be visible to anyone but yourself — do not insert a definition of a term in your written work when you’re only using it to clarify a singular, simple meaning (this compromises professionalism). Your reader has access to the same resources that you do and can already look up any word they do not recognize.  (You should never use the facile construction “The [Oxford English] Dictionary defines [word] as…” in a university essay, nor any thoughtful prose.)

Close reading, meanwhile, plays on the multiplicity of meaning (its multivalence, polysemy, and ambiguity!) — the idea that words mean many things all at once and contain layers of meaning whose play is what literature is all about.  Unlike simple definition look-ups, close reading research on the OED and MED should definitely be made visible to your reader, but it should be digested and synthesized thoroughly enough to make its place in your argument clear.  In a work of literature, most well-known and frequently-used meanings of a word can be argued to hold some significance, if only as a very minor connotation or resonance, in the interpretation of that word (but sometimes that argument is difficult to make)…

 …but you should most likely disqualify any meaning that postdates the death of your text’s author, or predates the author’s birth, by over 75 years or so (unless you’re specifically writing about the experience of reading a text in a period different from when it was written, which is rare).  That’s one way in which etymological research is crucial to close reading and literary scholarship.  The OED and MED can help crack open the history of a word, sketching out its etymology, showing which meanings are active in which years (i.e. contemporary with the author’s life), giving examples of its usage in sentences from across history (the first example is usually the earliest recorded example ever)—be sure to click to open the various hidden fields (if they are hidden) at the top of your definition.  If there is more than one separate entry for a given word, click on all of them, but be sure to think critically about which entries are relevant and which are not.  As much as the dating of words and meanings can helpfully restrict your close reading, it can also expand or add texture to your close reading by opening up new ideas of what words might mean in various contexts. 

The OED uses a variety of numbers, symbols and abbreviations in its entries: don’t gloss over these!  When you see a symbol you don’t recognize, refer to the OED’s Key to Symbols and Other Conventions (helpful tip: ante means “before”) and its List of Abbreviations.