ABSTRACT
If you want to find out what a word means, what do you do? Most people would look the word up in a dictionary. Dictionaries can indeed shed light on meanings and how they arose, but must be treated with caution, because word meaning is more than a compact definition of the type we see in dictionaries. Word meaning, one might say, is like an onion. First, it consists of many layers. Words typically have POLYSEMY – a range of different meanings. For example, the word set has at least 36 senses (try looking it up in a dictionary; you’ll find that different dictionaries represent different numbers of senses). Second, just as an onion’s taste will vary according to how people use it – whether in a curry sauce or a bolognaise sauce – the meanings of words vary according to use. Knowing the meaning of a word is knowing how it is used. As words become used in different ways and in different contexts, they acquire different associations and so the meaning changes.
