The Unmasking of English Dictionaries

Dixon, a professor at James Cook University, North Queensland, is evidently versatile and prolific: the listing of his written, co-written, edited or co-edited books numbers over 50, not only on linguistics but two on music and two novels under a pseudonym.

He attacks the established practice in standard English dictionaries of simply defining a word, giving its meaning but treating it in isolation, saying we also want to know its function and the circumstances in which it should be used in preference to words of similar meaning – a disputable assertion. This was, he says, Samuel Johnson’s approach, and has...