''Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners'', also known as ''MEDAL'', was first published in 2002 by

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. ''MEDAL'' is an advanced learner’s dictionary and shares most of the features of this type of dictionary: it provides definitions in simple language, using a controlled

defining vocabulary A defining vocabulary is a list of words used by lexicographers to write dictionary definitions. The underlying principle goes back to Samuel Johnson's notion that words should be defined using 'terms less abstruse than that which is to be explai ...

; most words have example sentences to illustrate how they are typically used; and information is given about how words combine grammatically or in collocations. ''MEDAL'' also introduced a number of innovations. These include: * ‘collocation boxes’ giving lists of high-frequency collocates, identified using

Sketch Engine Sketch Engine is a corpus manager and text analysis software developed by Lexical Computing CZ s.r.o. since 2003. Its purpose is to enable people studying language behaviour ( lexicographers, researchers in corpus linguistics, translators or lan ...

software * word frequency information, with the most frequent 7500 English words shown in red and categorised in three frequency bands, based on the idea, derived from Zipf's law, that a relatively small number of high-frequency words account for a high percentage of most texts * ‘metaphor boxes’, showing how the vocabulary used for expressing common concepts (such as ‘anger’) tends to reflect a common metaphorical framework. This is based on George Lakoff’s ideas of

conceptual metaphor In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. An example of this is the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "the pr ...

* a 50-page section providing guidance on writing academic English, based on a collaboration with the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics in Louvain,

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and using the Centre’s learner corpus data The ''Macmillan English Dictionary'' also exists as an

electronic dictionary An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media. Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including software installed on tablet or desktop computers ...

, available free on the Web. Like most online dictionaries, it benefits from being able to update content regularly with new words and meanings. In addition to the dictionary, the online version has a

thesaurus A thesaurus (plural ''thesauri'' or ''thesauruses'') or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea: Synonym dictionar ...

function enabling users to find synonyms for any word, phrase or meaning. There is also a blog (the ''Macmillan Dictionary'' Blog) with daily postings on language issues, especially on global English and language change. An "Open Dictionary" allows users to provide their own dictionary entries for new words they have come across. The online edition has been recognised as a good example of this emerging genre of reference publishing.Lannoy, V. Free online dictionaries: why and how?, in Granger, S. & Paquot, M. (Eds), ''eLexicography in the 21st Century: New Challenges, New Applications: Proceedings of eLex 2009'', Louvain, Belgium: Cahiers du Cental. 2010, 173-182

Editions

Related publications

* ''Macmillan Essential Dictionary'', a shorter version that contains the most basic vocabulary (over 45,000 headwords)

References

External links

''Macmillan English Dictionary'' Online

Centre for English Corpus Linguistics
{{Dictionaries of English Online English dictionaries