User studies have shown repeatedly that the type of information that dictionary users want from dictionaries the most is meaning. This is not surprising: in fact the dictionary has always been perceived as a repository of meanings of words. While this popular view has not changed much, the advent of electronic dictionaries can change the lexicographers’ approach to the indication of meaning. Th...

There are some different viewpoints on the verse 41 in chapter Anfal of the Holy Quran that it is necessary to have one fifth of spoil to different incomes. The main reasons for these different viewpoints are the interest meaning of ‘spoil’. Not only referring to dictionaries, but also linguistic principles have not an effect on determine the meaning of ‘spoil’ in (8: 41...

This paper deals with the treatment of word etymology in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. It also investigates EFL learners' attitudes towards the importance of etymology for understanding the meaning of the words they look up in dictionaries. The data were collected through tasks of looking up Arabic loan words in English in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. The results indicate t...

The present paper describes psycholinguistic experiments aimed at exploring the way people behave while accessing electronic dictionaries. In our work we focused on the access by meaning that, in comparison with the access by form, is currently less studied and very seldom implemented in modern dictionary interfaces. Thus, the goal of our experiments was to explore dictionary users’ requirement...