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Showing posts from May, 2017

AND site update: Search by semantic tag

The  revised semantic labeling system Already in the first published fascicle of AND 1 (back in the late 1970s), the English definitions sometimes were given a semantic category label. For example, sub  abatre 1 , the sense ‘to abate, put an end to’ was labelled ‘(law)’ and the sense ‘fir tree’ sub  abiet  had the label ‘(bot.)’. These bracketed items served to clarify the semantic context, identifying the first example as a legal term and the second as belonging to the semantic domain of botany .  However, even in the first phases of the AND 2 , no clear editorial policy, let alone statement, existed about what labels should be used, where or why. In practice these labels (eccl., orn., med., nav., culin., arithm. etc.)  were inserted  ad hoc , as and when an individual editor thought it would clarify a definition. As a result, such labels as were present were seriously inconsistent. (For further discussion of this, see Geert De Wilde, ‘Re-Considering the Semantic Labels