ABSTRACT
McColvin Medal An annual award by the LIBRARY ASSOCIATION for the most outstanding reference work published.
meanalike An informal term for PARONYM.
meaning The relationship between words or phrases and the objects or ideas which they designate. Several different aspects of this complex relationship have been studied in SEMANTICS, producing a range of theories and models according to how they approach the connection either between ‘words and things’ or between ‘words and words’. REFERENCE is the meaning relation between a linguistic unit and its
referent(s) in the extralinguistic world; this can be objective (DENOTATION) or subjective (CONNOTATION), but rarely is it one-to-one because of SENSE RELATIONS of polysemy, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and hyperonomy. SEMANTIC INFORMATION of various kinds is covered in the general dictionary by means of DEFINITION and EXAMPLE, and specialised reference works (such as THESAURUSES, WORDFINDING DICTIONARIES and SYNONYM DICTIONARIES) address particular aspects of meaning. CONCEPT, ETYMOLOGY, ONOMASIOLOGY, SENSE. Wierzbicka 1985, Allen 1986, Cruse 1986, Moon 1987, Jackson 1988, Swanepoel 1994, Considine 1996, Gouws 1996.
