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Do dictionaries make negative claims?

English Language & Usage Asked by TomDot Com on November 27, 2020

Although as stated in this question (concerning the seemingly contradictory senses of the definition of peruse)

it’s like saying "peruse is A" and "peruse is not A"

The senses provided by Merriam-Webster may appear to be semantically contradictory, however they do not preclude each other’s use, due to the nature of the senses being positive claims.

So in light of this, do there exist definitions that rather than affirming a word’s meaning within a context, restrict the meaning of a word such that it is deemed illegitimate within a given context?

Or otherwise phrased, as Mitch suggests in his comment, do dictionaries provide definitions that involve "using a more general definition and excluding portions of the general set"?

One Answer

Could a dictionary provide a definition, for example, in the form of: "Not of, or resembling X"?

Sure and it’s trivial to find such definitions in web-based dictionaries with a good search like site:merriam-webster.com "not of" or site:lexico.com "not of".

For example:

  • Nonmicrobial: not of, relating to, caused by, or being microbes (MW)

  • Marginal: not of central importance (MW)

  • Unnoble: Not of noble birth or rank; rare Of or relating to a person who is not of noble birth or rank. (Lexico)

(Many of the words you see in searches like that are words with negative prefixes, like un- and non-, not by coincidence.)

These definitions have no contradictions, but some do. Some words are autoantonyms, with one sense of the word being the opposite of the other. One of the most well known of these words is literally, which MW defines in one sense as “used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible”.

Answered by Laurel on November 27, 2020

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