Regional labels in some British and American dictionaries

Abstract

Regional labels are nowadays an accepted part of the shorthand of all general dictionaries. The present paper compares the use of the labels British, American/U. S., Scottish, Irish and Australian in seven British and three American dictionaries. Of the these one hundred regional terms investigated, thirty would generally speaking be classified as British, another thirty as American, twenty Scottish, and ten each either Irish or Australian. For many of the words, some lexicographers give no regional label, some include region as part of the definition, whereas others omit any mention of region. The criteria for using a particular label are usually only very sketchily explained in the prefaces. Examination of the words selected suggests that if we are to establish a more explicit and coherent system for indicating the regional restriction of a word, it will be necessary to distinguish: (1) the geographical area in which the word is commonly used, (2) possible uses outside that area, and (3) the precise phenomenon denoted by the word. © 1996 Oxford University Press.