Contents, Use, Usability : Dictionaries from the Perspective of a Translator and a Language Teacher [1st, New ed.] 9783631798003, 3631798008

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Contents, Use, Usability : Dictionaries from the Perspective of a Translator and a Language Teacher [1st, New ed.]
 9783631798003, 3631798008

Table of contents :
The use of dictionaries in teaching English as a Foreign Language --
Dictionaries as a translation tool --
Bilingual dictionaries --
Specialized dictionaries --
Electronic dictionaries --
Dictionary structure --
Dictionary criticism.

Citation preview

Contents, Use, Usability

STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS, ANGLOPHONE LITERATURES AND CULTURES Edited by Robert Kiełtyka and Agnieszka Uberman Advisory Board: Réka Benczes (Budapest, Hungary) Zoltán Kövecses (Budapest, Hungary) Anna Malicka-Kleparska (Lublin, Poland) Sándor Martsa (Pécs, Hungary) Rafał Molencki (Katowice, Poland) Tadeusz Rachwał (Warsaw, Poland) Elżbieta Rokosz-Piejko (Rzeszów, Poland) Slávka Tomaščíková (Košice, Slovakia)

VOLUME 21

Notes on the quality assurance and peer review of this publication Prior to publication, the quality of the work published in this series is reviewed by the editors and members of Advisory Board of the series.

Dorota Osuchowska / Lucyna Harmon (eds.)

Contents, Use, Usability Dictionaries from the Perspective of a Translator and a Language Teacher

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. This publication was financially supported by the University of Rzeszów. Cover illustration printed with kind permission of Jakub Osuchowski

Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck

ISSN 2364-7558 978-3-631-79238-4 (Print) 978-3-631-79800-3 (E-PDF) 978-3-631-79801-0 (EPUB) 978-3-631-79802-7 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b15991 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2019 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Preface We are pleased to announce that a new editorial series called Contents, Use, Usability:  Dictionaries from the Perspective of a Translator and a Language Teacher will be available to all with a keen interest in dictionaries and their use in a wide variety of professional and educational contexts. When we first talked to individuals who – as we hoped – would be prepared to act as contributors, a concern was expressed about their lack of extensive experience in lexicographic research as a potential disqualifying factor. However, it was never our intention to restrict access to the series on such grounds. To our mind, any language professional that needs to reach for a dictionary on a regular basis is capable of providing us with valuable insights concerning the reference works currently at their disposal. By the same token, many of them – especially those with some research experience – should be in a position to undertake small- and larger-scale research projects whose findings could shed more light on the following (sample) broad areas of interest to us, including: – the status of the dictionary in a range of educational settings, e.g. if its use is sanctioned by official documents such as the national curricula and/or syllabi; – its ‘presence’ in the teaching materials for use with students of translation or students learning a native or an additional (second or foreign) language; are they present at all and does this presence, or lack thereof, correlate, in any manner, with the latter’s perception of a dictionary; – their own attitude towards dictionaries – the literature contains some hints that many teachers consider a dictionary too dangerous to give to users, especially those of a younger age, and to be more of an obstacle than of help; – problems they themselves and their students experience while putting a dictionary to use; – the popular perception of a dictionary (a friend; a foe; both) in the cultural milieu they represent; the metaphors (e.g. a walking dictionary) which embody this knowledge;

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– electronic dictionaries as a viable alternative to their print counterparts. This is by no means an exhaustive list of issues that were addressed in this, the first part of the planned series, but our future contributors could use this as a starting point for their own queries. Given that – and this is our own assessment of the current situation – dictionaries for less known languages are not adequately represented in the literature, our focus will be on contributions that can fill this gap, especially that the present volume represents only a tiny fraction of countries in which dictionaries are used on a daily basis. We hope this is a list that will gradually expand as we progress. Of course, for that to happen, those eventually reading this work would have to find at least some of its contents sufficiently inspiring to engage in a dialogue with the authors by providing us with accounts that hold true for their milieus, their working settings, their languages and for dictionaries they and other language professionals like them have to rely on, often despite their obvious imperfections. Dorota Osuchowska and Lucyna Harmon

Note to potential contributors The series aims and scope Contents, Use, Usability: Dictionaries from the Perspective of a Translator and a Language Teacher series seeks to attract contributors from all corners of the world and from professional milieus in which dictionary use is common. Each annual issue planned concerns a dictionary in support of native and foreign language teaching (at all levels) and dictionary use by translators and interpreters. However, proposals from individuals who represent other professions in which dictionaries play a vital role are more than welcome to contribute. Both theoretical and empirical approaches are appreciated as both contribute to the development of our knowledge of contemporary dictionaries’ contents, use and usability, their current status and sensitivities surrounding their use.

Submission of manuscripts The complete manuscript must be submitted via email direct to one of the series’ editors ([email protected]). Deadline for sending your contributions is in December each year. Contributions should not exceed 30,000 characters (with spaces). Manuscripts that do not adhere to the editorial guidelines set and/or are linguistically incorrect will not be processed. After collecting sufficient material for one issue (approx. 600  000 characters with spaces), the manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer reviewing. Authors whose contributions have been accepted for publication will receive electronic proofs for final (minor) correction which must be returned by deadlines determined by the editors. The editors will notify contributors as soon as possible as to the acceptability of their manuscripts, but will not enter into correspondence about the interest of the series in a proposed topic. Publishing the current volume took about a year, but it is our intention to reduce this time to six months within the date of publications submission. The editors plan to have the volumes of the series appear in both paper and electronic form.

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Note to potential contributors

Contributions  should be in English only. Individuals who are not writing in their native language should have their manuscript checked by a native speaker before submission to the editor, and a confirmation of this fact should be included in the original submission. When preparing the manuscript, contributors should refer to the Peter Lang book style sheet, especially regarding the font type and size, the proper format for citations and the reference section entries, and a host of related issues. Manuscripts that are under consideration for publication elsewhere may not be submitted. If the author wishes to use his own material in other publications, the series is acknowledged as the original place of publication. The editors must be informed of the author’s current email and postal address. Upon publication, authors will receive a print copy of the volume in which their contribution has been published.

Contents List of contributors ..........................................................................

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Oksana Dzera Bible phraseography: descriptive and contrastive approaches .............  15 Laura Karpinska Specialized bilingual dictionaries as a translation tool: a case study of Latvian-English-Latvian dictionaries of legal terms ...............  35 Ioannis Karras The use of dictionaries in English as a foreign language teaching and learning .......................................................................................  49 Dace Liepiņa Service and disservice of Latvian-English-Latvian legal terminology dictionaries in translation ...............................................  63 Oleksandra Litvinyak Interpreters and dictionaries ...............................................................  75 Piotr Maziarz, Debora Onik Exploring translation competence acquisition: the case of context in an electronic legal repository ..........................................................  85 Michał Organ Working with CAT tools: memoQtranslator pro ................................ 105 Valentyna Savchyn Dictionary in the totalitarian society: Ukrainian lexicography in the 20th c. .......................................................................................... 119 Mateusz Szal Sources of specialised terminology in technical translation ................. 137 Dorota Osuchowska Assessing the effectiveness of online bilinguals for translating collocation ......................................................................................... 147

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Lucyna Harmon Lexicographic borrowing vs. creative rendition in literary translation: a case study of a Polish translation of F.S. Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby ..................................................................... 167 List of figures ..................................................................................... 233 List of tables ....................................................................................... 235

List of contributors Oksana Dzera  is a Professor at the Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics of the  Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine, where she lectures in Translation Theory, Reception of the Ukrainian Literature in the Anglophone World, Dynamics of Developing Translation Principles, Modern Theories of Translation, Genre Theories of Translation, Introduction to Research Methodology, Theory and History of the Bible Translation. Her research interests are in intertextuality and translation, translation of Biblical intertexts, the history of literary translation in Ukraine, lingual personality of translators, translation sociology, contrastive studies of Bible phaseology and phraseography. She has published over fifty articles and authored “Biblijna intertekstual “nist” i pereklad: anhloukrayinskyj kontekst”  [Bible Intertextuality and Translation:  English and Ukrainian Context] (489  p., 2017)  and “English and Ukrainian Lexicography (a concise theory and history)” (169 p., 2004). Lucyna Harmon is Professor at the Institute of English Studies and Head of the Department of Translation Theory, University of Rzeszów, Poland. Her expertise includes general and literary translation, general and comparative linguistics, and intercultural communication. Laura Karpinska (Dr.  philol.) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Latvia in Riga, Latvia, where she lectures in Lexicography, Lexicology, English for law, English for academic studies and Language and other communication systems. Her research interests include lexicography, lexicology and corpus linguistics. Her doctoral thesis “Critical Analysis of English-Latvian Lexicographic Tradition” was defended at the University of Latvia in 2012. A  monograph based on the doctoral thesis entitled “English-Latvian Lexicographic Tradition:  A Critical Analysis” was published in 2015 by De Gruyter. This study provides a survey of the development of the English-Latvian lexicographic tradition focusing on the factors which have influenced it, the typical features of English-Latvian dictionaries at the mega-, macro- and microstructural level, the problematic aspects of English-Latvian lexicography and offers solutions for improving the quality of English-Latvian dictionaries.

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Dr. Ioannis Karras holds two B.A. degrees in English and Linguistics from the University of Calgary, Canada; a M.Ed. in TEFL from the Hellenic Open University, Greece, a M.Sc. in Intercultural Communication from the University of Warwick, the UK and a PhD in Applied Linguistics, University of Athens, Greece. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting at Ionian University, Greece, and a module coordinator on the TESOL master’s program of the Hellenic Open University. He has lectured as a visiting professor or as an invited speaker at various universities around the world. Moreover, Dr. Karras has delivered numerous talks at international conferences and has conducted seminars with national and international audiences. He has published numerous edited book chapters and articles in journals and conference proceedings in applied linguistics, TEFL, and intercultural studies. Among his academic and teaching interests is the use of dictionaries in TEFL and translation studies. Dace Liepiņa (Dr.  paed.) is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities of University of Latvia in Riga, Latvia, where she lectures on Stylistics, Legal Translation and Interpreting, English for Law and Business. Her research interests include terminology, stylistics, translation and interpreting. During the EU pre-accession period she was involved in terminology development as an interpreter and translator for various PHARE projects on harmonization of Latvian legislation. After EU accession she has continued to follow developments in Latvian term-formation practice and quality of English-Latvian dictionaries in the field of law as a primary prerequisite for successful training and subsequent work of interpreters and translators. Oleksandra Litvinyak is an Associate Professor at the Hryhoriy Kochur Department of Translation/Interpreting Studies and Contrastive Linguistics, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Lviv, Ukraine), where she lectures in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. She believes that since interpreters use various lexicographical sources in their everyday activity, a deeper inquiry into the topic facilitates the development of one’s professional competence both as an interpreter and interpreter trainer. Piotr Maziarz is a PhD student at the University of Rzeszów, Poland, where he studies Linguistics. His expertise encompasses Cognitive Linguistics and

List of contributors

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Translation Studies, particularly the notions of Conceptual Metaphors and translations thereof from Polish into English and vice versa in various legal documents. Piotr’s interest in dictionaries (and other translation tools) together with his active participation in the creation and development of an electronic repository of legal terminology is the outcome of his professional life as a translator. Debora Onik is a PhD student of Literary Studies at the University of Rzeszów, Poland. Her fields of expertise encompass literature and Translation Studies, especially translating children’s literature and books concerning folklore from Polish into English and vice versa. Being a translator herself, Debora uses multifarious translation tools on a daily basis, hence her particular interest in dictionaries. The said interest led to her participating in the creation and development of an electronic repository of legal terminology whose purpose is to help translators with their job. Michał Organ, PhD is an assistant professor at the Department of Translation Theory in the Institute of English Studies, University of Rzeszów (Poland). His main research interests include audiovisual translation, humor translation, censorship and manipulation in translation, unofficial translation, translation of tourist information texts and CAT tools. Dorota Osuchowska is Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Rzeszów, Poland, where she lectures in Applied Linguistics, Lexicography and Academic Writing. Her research revolves around dictionary use, phraseology and gendered language. Valentyna Savchyn is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine, where she lectures in Lexicography, History of Literary Translation and Art of Literary Translation. Her research interests are in the history of literary translation in Ukraine and role of translators, literary translation and dictionaries in the totalitarian society. She has published over a hundred of articles and book chapters in Ukraine and abroad, and is the author of Mykola Lukash – Podvyzhnyk Ukrainskoho Khudozhnioho Perekladu [Mykola Lukash as a Pillar of Ukrainian Literary translation] (2014) and a  compiler  of  a biobibliographical guide “Mykola Lukash” (2003).

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Mateusz Szal, PhD, is a lecturer at Rzeszów University of Technology, where he teaches technical English in the areas of mechanical and material engineering. His expertise includes ESP and technical translation, as well as issues of applied linguistics.

Oksana Dzera Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

Bible phraseography: descriptive and contrastive approaches Abstract: The article adopts descriptive, contrastive and taxonomic approaches to the analysis of Bible phraseography. The first part presents an overview of Biblical idioms representations in specialized and general dictionaries of the English language. The author stresses the necessity to compile an exhaustive multilingual dictionary of Biblical idioms and highlights the problems involved. The second part of the article is a contrastive corpus study of Bible-derived idioms according to a number of taxonomic principles with the focus on etymological, cognitive and structurally semantic ones. Keywords: Bible phraseography, primary and secondary Biblical idioms, polygenetic Biblical idioms, precedency, tertiary Biblical source

1 English Bible phraseography: an overview Phraseological/idiomatic dictionaries in the Anglophone world, though quite numerous and substantial in terms of scope and illustrations, are based rather on the compiler’s (compilers’) intuition than on elaborated phraseographical principles. More often than not are idioms perceived as a marked (metaphoric) use of some collocations, exclamations or stereotypical expressions. Lexicographical description of Biblical idioms requires a translation studies approach because a headword in such a dictionary is always a translation. English Bible idioms are traced back to the tertiary Biblical source1 – King James Bible or other English translations of the 16th century (with a small percentage of Latinisms from the Vulgate). Thus, the

1 Primary Biblical source is represented by Hebrew texts, Septuagint and the Aramaic Peshitta for the Old Testament and the New Testament Old Greek texts; the Vulgate and the Church Slavonic Bible belong to the secondary Biblical source while national translations of the Holy Scripture are tertiary sources.

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task of Bible phraseography is to elucidate the specificity of the national lingual representation of the Bible as a precedent phenomenon. Not only do Biblical idioms make manifest the universal in the national but also raise some problems of conceptual deviations in the Bible interpretations. The first yet still one of the most authoritative lexicographical sources of Bible phraseology is the book Idioms in the Bible Explained and a Key to the Original Gospel by world-renowned Bible translator and commentator George M.  Lamsa. The author was born and reared in Assyria, a region where, as argued by Lamsa (1931:xi), “the customs, manners and idioms of the ancient Aramaic language are miraculously preserved to the present day”. Compiling a dictionary of Bible idioms in the first part of the book Lamsa had in view to explain the unusual Oriental imagery to Europeans in order to facilitate the reading of the Bible and correct errors that crept into Biblical scholarship through literal translations into national languages. Lamsa’s dictionary explains nearly one thousand Biblical words and expressions representing the Hebrew-Aramaic lingual picture of the world or, in other words, primary Biblical words and expressions. The term idiom used in the book title is given a very broad sense and covers monolexemic Bible symbols (fox, lion, serpent, bear, angel, rock, darkness), theological notions (good, evil) and set expressions structured as word combinations or sentences with different degree of cohesion of their components. Lamsa both explains meanings of important idioms, metaphors and figures of speech in the context of Scripture and lists Biblical idioms used in modern English. However, they are not given a separate status as Lamsa’s idioms are presented sequentially according to their appearance in the Bible beginning with the Book of Genesis and up to the Revelation. Getting back to the sources of Aramaic imagery Lamsa provides unexpected interpretations of Biblical idioms whose primary meaning has been obliterated as a result of erroneous convention of literal translation. A good sample of the broken stereotypes is Lamsa’s interpretation of Christ’s last words on the cross. All translations of the Gospels of Matthew 27.46 and Mark 15.34 have retained these words in the original tongue (“Eli, Eli, Lmana sabachthani”) yet given them a different meaning – “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” (KJV:Matth. 27.46). Lamsa claims that

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in Aramaic this phrase means ‘My God, my God, for this I was kept (this was my destiny)’ (Lamsa 1931:103). The traditional complaint and dissatisfaction is transformed into determination to leave everything to God. The asset of Lamsa’s dictionary is the representation of polysemy of idioms which, however, is rather difficult to spot because of the sequential order. The meaning of each repeated idiom is determined by the context. In particular, the idiom tree of life in Genesis 2.9 means ‘eternal life’ (Lamsa 1931:3), in Proverbs 11.30  – ‘a good family’ (Lamsa 1931:23) while in Revelation – ‘perfect man; perfect humanity’ (Lamsa 1931:71). Darkness symbolizes ‘ignorance; lack of enlightenment and understanding’ in Genesis 1.4 (Lamsa 1931:3), ‘ignorance and disaster’ in Isaiah 60.2 (Lamsa 1931:34) and ‘ignorance and superstition’ in John 8.19 (Lamsa 1931:60). To sum up, Lamsa aimed at describing primary Biblical idioms and metaphors whose original meaning has been ‘rubbed out’ through the centuries-old tradition of erroneous interpretations and translations. Absolutely different principles have laid the foundation for the book Begat: the King James Bible and the English Language (2010, 1st edition) by a prominent British linguist David Crystal. The book is simultaneously a lexicographic research and a catalogue of Biblical idioms with the focus on their tertiary source. The researcher’s ambition is to find and describe all modern English idioms rooted in King James Version of the Holy Bible (1611) and previous translations of the 16th century. The investigation has resulted in the catalogue of 257 Biblical idioms (Crystal 2012:263−300). Each entry lists an idiom and its prototextual quotation in six translations: Wycliffe’s Bible, Tyndale’s Bible, Geneva Bible, Bishops Bible, Douai-Rheims Bible and King James Version. The latter is a basic translation as it is a gauge for distributing idioms into: 1) those apparently unique to KJV (total 18); 2) KJV usage shared with one other translation (total 27); 3)  KJV usage shared with two other translations (total 39); 4)  KJV usage shared with three other translations (total 47); 5) KJV usage shared with four other translations (total 50); 6) KJV usage shared by all other translations (total 27); 7) those not occurring in this exact form in any of the translations (total 37); 8) not in KJV but in one of the other translations (total 7); 9) those used only in KJV but have a history in Old/Middle English (total 2).

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Another appendix to the book (Crystal 2012:303−304) represents the number of references made to the OT and NT sources. The quantitative analysis proves that idioms originating from the Gospel of Matthew outnumber all the other books of the Holy Scripture (60 units). The Gospels of Luke and John (16 and 15 units) in the NT and the Books of Genesis (21 units), Exodus (18 units) and Ecclesiastes (12 units) also abundantly contributed to the English phraseology. Conversely, a substantial part of the Scripture (Chronicles, Judges, Kings, Minor Prophets and Epistles) is, as Crystal aptly remarks (2012:83), a “linguistic wilderness” as to the origination of idioms. The findings of the research and the dictionary lead to unexpected conclusions about the exaggerated role of KJV in contributing to the English phraseology and unduly underestimation of other translations, particularly the Catholic Douai-Rheims Bible, which is the only source of the idiom the way of all flesh, a well-known title of Samuel Butler’s novel. Only 18 idiomatic expressions unquestionably originate in the language of KJV which relies heavily on the translations of the previous century. Yet undoubtedly KJV did more than any other translation to fix these Bible expressions in the mind of English speakers. Using rich illustrative material from the work of poets, playwrights, novelists, politicians, film-makers, advertisers and even hip-hop singers Crystal demonstrates that the sphere of Biblical idioms usage is virtually unlimited. Biblical set expressions constitute one fourth of The Wordsworth Dictionary of Classical and Literary Allusions (1994).2 Allusion is defined as ‘a figure of speech that compares aspects or qualities of counterparts in history, mythology, scripture, literature, popular or contemporary culture’ (WDCLA:V−VI). Not infrequently does the aforementioned category include Biblical proper names, idioms, proverbs and sayings. Despite subjective approach to entry selection (“if it (allusion –О. D.) «rang a bell» with us, if we had encountered it in our reading” (WDCLA:  VIII)), the compilers succeeded in listing frequently used Biblical expressions most

2 Initially the title included the word Biblical: The Facts on File Dictionary of Classical, Biblical and Literary Allusions (1987).

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of which are fixed in the language through their repetitive use in various discourses. Each entry contains an extended citation from the Bible and explanation of its extra-Biblical, acquired sense, often with a reference to literary sources, cultural artifacts or even political speeches through which the expression got fixed in the mind of the English-speaking public. For example, Biblical idiom house divided (Matt. 12.25) alludes to Lincoln’s speech about “half slave and half free” American nation delivered in 1858 (WDCLA:104) while phrase let my people go (Ex. 5.1−2) is associated with Afro-American spirituals of the 19th century adapted by Armstrong in his famous standard (WDCLA:131−132). The aforementioned reference books stand apart from dictionaries of Bible quotations, such as The Wordsworth Dictionary of Bible Quotations (WDBQ) compiled by Manser in 1989 and A Dictionary of Quotations from the Bible (DQFB) by Miner and Rawson (1988). Though of the same type, these dictionaries differ structurally. They are united by the source of quotations – KJV. Apart from this, the Wordsworth edition supplements this material with Coverdale’s Book of Common Prayers (1662) while Miner and Rawson’s dictionary, if necessary, specifies the meaning with citations from Revised Standard Version of King James Bible (1885) renowned for its precision. The Wordsworth dictionary follows the structure of the Bible listing over 4  000 precedent and lesser-known quotations in the order of their appearance in the Scripture. The dictionary separately singles out 80 expressions with high precedency, mainly idioms of Biblical origin (for example, my brother’s keeper, a babel of voices, a fly in the ointment) with a detailed explanation of their meaning. Miner and Rawson’s dictionary includes over 3  000 Bible quotations and has an idiographic structure. The compilers list alphabetically the topics associated with quotations under the heading (for instance, Abel, ability, Abraham, absence). Some entries contain theological, etymological and historical data and cross-references. Both reference books have an alphabetic index which assists in finding a quotation in question according to the keyword. Biblical lexis and phraseology is abundantly represented in explanatory dictionaries of the English language. Of special importance are

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believers-oriented reference books, such as The All Nations English Dictionary (ANED). An additional purpose of the compilers is to help people understand the Word of God, which leads to conflating linguistic and theological senses in entries with Bible-marked headwords. Unfortunately, the usage label ‘spir. (spiritual)’ is provided rather sporadically marking a very small amount of Biblical meanings. Theological (and by default didactic) principles of the compilers imply 1)  a detailed theological interpretation of some conceptual words, such as man, sin, law; 2) explanation of Biblical meanings of words;3 3) Bible quotations (whose sources are KJV, New International Version of the Bible and New King James Version) illustrating meanings of words in common use; e.g. the first meaning of the lexeme justify (‘to declare free from blame’) is illustrated by three long phrases from the Epistle to Romans (ANED:358); 4)  data on names of Bible characters and titles of Bible chapters. But for a few exceptions (Adam, Eve, Noah), the dictionary includes only those names that are components of titles of the Bible chapters: the user will find information about minor prophets, but learn nothing about Cain, Abraham or Jacob. For example, the dictionary neglects Jesus’ treacherous disciple whose name has become a byword of betrayal (Judah), yet it relates on apostle Jude, an author of one epistle. The compilers do not use etymological labels for Biblical idioms. For example, the entry fly in the ointment includes only the explanation of the meaning (ANED:243); the idiom to wash one’s hands is marked as fig. infml. (ANED:731); the phrase to be one’s brother’s keeper is quoted from Cenesis 4.9 to illustrate keeper (ANED:359). Biblical proper names are listed in Webster’s Dictionary. The American lexicographic tradition whose foundation was laid by Noah Webster, unlike the British one, includes in linguistic dictionaries compressed encyclopedic information on prominent people in history and literary characters. The dictionary provides data both on minor prophets (Amos, Habakkuk) and well-known characters (Cain, Judas, Herod). In most cases

3 More often than not is the Biblical meaning given preference despite its lesser frequency. For example, the first submitted meaning of the word dragon is ‘another name for Satan’ while ‘an imaginary fire-breathing animal’ is listed as the second one (ANED:186).

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etymological information is given, either with a specified first form of the word (for example, “Babel […] [