TY - JOUR AU - Iamartino, Giovanni PY - 2017/04/14 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Lexicography, or the Gentle Art of Making Mistakes JF - Altre Modernità JA - AMonline VL - IS - 0 SE - Saggi Ensayos Essais Essays DO - 10.13130/2035-7680/8303 UR - https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/AMonline/article/view/8303 SP - 48-78 AB - The man in the street’s attitude of mind towards dictionaries is that they are the true repositories of all the words in a language, and that they are both authoritative and objective – in short, dictionaries are perfect. By mainly referring to the early history of English mono- and bilingual lexicography, this essay explodes the myth of the perfect dictionary and shows that mistakes in dictionaries may profitably be discussed under two headings: lexicographical mistakes, i.e. vague or circular definitions and the so-called ghost words in monolingual dictionaries, and non-insertable equivalents in bilingual dictionaries; and socio-cultural mistakes, which are related to the often elusive impact of ideology on dictionary-making. ER -