How to Use a Dictionary

Via the Legal Writing Prof Blog, I learned of Justice Antonin Scalia's and Brian Garner's recent article, A Note on the Use of Dictionaries, in the Green Bag.  In this Article, Justice Scalia and Garner describe general principles on which one should rely when using dictionaries, and they provide a list of the most authoritative dictionaries.

One principle I realized I had never thought enough about was how to approach dictionaries' ordering of terms.  Back in my debate days, I was simply taught never to argue that one definition is more authoritative than another because it is listed first in the dictionary.  In their article, Justice Scalia and Garner point out that it's not quite that simple.  They write:

You must consult the prefatory material to understand the principles on which the dictionary has been assembled. The ordering of senses provides a classic example. Although many people assume that the first sense listed in a dictionary is the “main” sense, that is often quite untrue. Some dictionaries list senses from oldest in the language (putting obsolete or archaic senses first) to newest. Others list them according to current frequency. Using a dictionary knowledgeably requires a close reading of the principles discussed at the outset.

Surely enough, I found that the Oxford American College Dictionary (a dictionary that is not listed in the article, but the only dictionary I had on hand) describes its system of preference as listing a "core" meaning of the word, followed by "subsenses" that logically follow.  Unfortunately, the discussion of these meanings does not go into much more depth, leaving me confused as to what a "core" is and why it is important.  It sounds important, however, (more important than a "subsense" at least).

If any moot court problem developer were to read this article, perhaps they would consider applying what they learned.  It would be interesting if a problem developer were to write a scenario involving a question of statutory interpretation, provide a number of dictionary definitions, the prefatory section of each dictionary, and Justice Scalia and Garner's article on dictionary usage.  This would at least require employing brief-writing techniques that most legal writing courses don't manage to cover.

Of course, any problem developer must keep in mind that judges must also be able to engage with the problem -- and the notion of asking questions about dictionary usage may seem less than fascinating to most.  Still, it is never too early to speculate.