LEXICOGRAPHY

“Cough: A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity.” – Samuel Johnson

I am going to be very busy over the next few months. The reason is that as well as my regular job I am going to be working above and beyond the call of duty on another project that I have just consented to. Some of you may know that in 2005/6 I was involved in a massive project, that being the editing of the first ever, comprehensive Australian Medical Dictionary. It is the “Mosby’s Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions”, a monumental work of over 2100 pages with many tens of thousands of entries. It was a gruelling task, but at the same time extremely satisfying and amazingly interesting. The hard work paid off and currently this dictionary is the most popular in Australasia.

I have just consented to be one of the three editors-in-chief for the second edition of the dictionary that will be published in 2008. That is the way that scientific publications go. With the break-neck speed of innovative developments, evolving new knowledge and practice in medicine and all of the health professions, it is imperative to keep up and constantly correct, amend, update and improve. So for the next few months I shall be doing that as well as working my day job and I’ll definitely try to keep up blogging away as well.

Writing a dictionary is much more difficult than writing a book, even if it is a scientific book that one is considering. For this dictionary, we have 50 specialist consultants, 20 appendix consultants, and 21 reviewers, and they are all under the editorial control of the three editors-in-chief, myself and two other wonderful (if slightly crazy people, as we lexicographers must be to agree to do this type of work!). I am in charge of 20 consultants (in as many general topic areas), and as well as that, I look after the entries in four specialist areas. This implies that I shall define over a couple of thousand terms in the dictionary myself, and have the final say over the definition of several thousand of other terms. This is quite a powerful position to find oneself in, but at the same time it is a position of great responsibility.

So on this Thesaurus Thursday, what better word to give you, than:

lexicographer |ˌleksəˈkägrəfər| noun
A person who compiles dictionaries.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: modern Latin, from Greek lexikon (biblion) ‘(book) of words,’ from lexis ‘word,’ from legein ‘speak’ and Greek graphé ‘writing.’

Or if you prefer Samuel Johnson’s (1709-1784) definition from his dictionary (1755) of the English Language:

Lexicographer: A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

Wish me luck!