The Language of Defining Synonyms in LDOCE and OALD between Consistency and Contradiction: A Source of Help or Confusion?

This paper examines the language of definition in explaining a set of synonyms in two dictionaries: LDOCE and OALD. The selected set of synonyms is: ‘shake, tremble, quiver, and shiver’. The procedure of analysis was to decompose the definitions and the examples into meaning conditions and compare them to each other. The results suggested that the dictionary language that was adopted in both dictionaries followed a contradictory style of defining in terms of using restrictive and non-restrictive elements in the language of defining. This result suggests immediate revision in order to enable language learners to make better use of these dictionaries in terms of synonym comprehension.