If you read an entry that has definitions in historical order,
you're actually kind of reading the biography of the word.
This is where it started.
This is where it got its education.
This is where it got married.
Coming up on Word Matters, some dictionary demystification.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Neil Servin, Amon Shea, Peter Sokolowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Dictionaries are pretty straightforward once you find your way past the weird pronunciation symbols in a few abbreviations,
right?
If there's more than one definition given,
The one with the one beside it is definitely the main one,
and the others are secondary and tertiary and so on, right?
Sorry, no. But worry not,
Peter Sokolowski is here to explain just what the order of definitions in a dictionary entry means.
One common assumption of dictionary definitions is that the first definition that you read of a word is the most important one.
And I think that's so common as a misunderstanding that, in fact, it's probably worth investigating.
The point being, lexicographers and linguists often don't at all think in that way.