Choose Words with One or Few Meanings

My relatively small German-English dictionary offers six German equiva-lents for the English fix and eleven for mind. Similarly, during my first European seminar, I was asked repeatedly about my unconscious and habitual use of the word address: as in address a problem, address an issue, to be addressed later. Apparently, this term mystified many mem-bers of my audience.

Ordinary English words acquire many meanings, some of them meta-phorical, some of them the residue of longer expressions. In the expres-sion bated breath, for example, the bated is a derivative of abated. NOTE:

Baited is the wrong word. Not only does nearly every noun, verb, and modifier have at least two or three close synonyms, but each has a hand-ful of meanings of its own. The word address, as a verb, can mean to talk about or approach; as a noun it can be a street number or a lecture.

Moreover, a lecture can be a scholarly speech, which is synonymous with address, or a scolding, which is not.

Simplified English systems, of course, address (I mean solve) this problem by artificially limiting each word to a single meaning AND a single part of speech. The SE glossary is compact, and each entry re-solves questions of meaning. In contrast, a standard dictionary, espe-cially a large one, offers numerous possibilities, more questions than answers. To illustrate, here is the SE definition of head:

Head (n)–the top of something.

In contrast, The American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed.) offers 32 definitions of head as a noun, including an obscene one. Fortunately, the American Heritage lists the most recent definitions first; its first defini-tion, however, contains the word forwardmost, a term that will appear in almost no dictionary and registers as a spelling error for my word pro-cessor. There are also four definitions of head as an adjective, including a slang reference to users of illegal drugs, six as a transitive verb, and three as an intransitive verb.

Although few bilingual dictionaries are so extensive in their defini-tions, it is still extremely useful for E1 writers to acquire bilingual dic-tionaries for the main languages of their E2 readers and to check a sample of their nouns and verbs. When several meanings of the English word are given, writers should either choose a word whose definition is first or second, or, alternately, choose another word. To illustrate, the Cassell’s French-English dictionary does not offer a definition of address close to my meaning in address a problem; the closest it comes is entreprendre, to address oneself to. The Oxford Hebrew-English Dictionary offers seven Hebrew synonyms for the transitive verb address, none of them as close as the French.

If, however, the writer replaces address the problem with explain the problem, the result is much better. Here Cassell’s offers one French synonym for explain—expliquer—which is quite close to the mean-ing; the Oxford Hebrew gives three synonyms for explain, but the first, reading from the right, is l’havhir, which is the closest to the intended meaning. As a recurring editorial tactic, then, writers should replace a word with many meanings with one that has fewer meanings, or only one, in rare cases.

But what if there is no such alternative? Obviously, the solution is to select a word whose first or second meaning comes closest to your intention. This rule can be difficult to follow, however. Unfortunately, many of the world’s dictionaries still honor the policy of listing the oldest meanings of a word first, not mentioning the current meanings until the end of the entry. So, the first three or four definitions may be rare or archaic!

Indeed, throughout the world, it is difficult to know what English dictionary has been used as the basis for the English component of the bilingual dictionary. Often, it may be assumed that the text is from a

public domain edition, hopelessly out of date. That assumption is for those countries that honor American copyrights; in other countries, a more recent dictionary might have been plagiarized. The public domain version of Webster’s Unabridged (1913)—the basis of many no-royalty English dictionaries—illustrates the problem. If you look up transpar-ent, you will find

(Trans*par”ent) a. [F., from LL. transparens, -entis, p. pr. of trans-parere to be transparent; L. trans across, through + trans-parere to appear.)

1. Having the property of transmitting rays of light, so that bodies can be distinctly seen through; pervious to light; diaphanous;

pellucid; as, transparent glass; a transparent diamond;—

opposed to opaque. “Transparent elemental air.” Milton.

2. Admitting the passage of light; open; porous; as, a transpar-ent veil. Dryden.

For template, this dictionary says “Same as Templet,” and for templet the dictionary says

(Tem’plet) n. [LL. templatus vaulted, from L. templum a small timber.] [Spelt also template.]

1. A gauge, pattern, or mold, commonly a thin plate or board, used as a guide to the form of the work to be executed; as, a mason’s or a wheelwright’s templet.

2. (Arch.) A short piece of timber, iron, or stone, placed in a wall under a girder or other beam, to distribute the weight or pressure.

In other words, any bilingual dictionary based on this lexicon (or its derivatives) will probably be no help to an E2 reader confronting the modern uses of transparent or template. That is all the more reason to replace words that are current and fashionable, where possible, with more traditional, stable vocabulary (invisible, open, or obvious for trans-parent; pattern, format, or design for template).

The problems of word choice illustrate why, as mentioned earlier, the special needs of E2 often oblige us to use longer words with more syl-lables than we would use in writing for E1. Most E1s know what we mean when we say, succinctly, that an investigative trail is cold. Most E2s can barely guess, and their bilingual dictionaries will get them no closer.

Tactic 5: Avoid Verbs with Two or Three Words in Them