Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Edit Gaál: Dictionaries and methaphors: a consideration of the presentation of methaphoric usages in a selection of dictonaries

own discussion of the scrutiny of the treatment of selected words in four dictionaries. The lists of words with the metaphorical meanings show a striking difference in their number even at the first look. If we calculate the mathematical average of the occurrences of metaphorical usages, we find that the lexical field of flowers has the lowest rate: 1.16. Here the range of recorded meanings is between 0 and 2. The words 'lily' and 'daisy' had entries with no recorded metaphorical meanings in two dictionaries, CIDE and AHD. The averages are higher with the two other lexical fields, but even between them the difference is significant: body parts - 2.25 and animals 4.16. The range of occurrences is 2-10 with animals and 2-6 with body parts. These figures of the averages and ranges of occurrences are quite revealing, but evidently cannot give a basis for drawing any general conclusions as the examined number of words is not large enough to be statistically significant. However, the results merit a question as to what might cause these relatively significant differences in the case of the selected twelve words. It seems to be quite obvious that the lexical field a word belongs to will indicate the tendency of more or less metaphoric usages. But there are differences within the lexical fields themselves, so there must be some other factor that influences the word's aptitude for metaphoric usages. In a metaphor the items compared, i.e.: the tenor and vehicle have some minor characteristics that serve as the ground of comparison. Consequently the metaphorical usages I found listed in the dictionaries must reveal the elements of meanings that are taken as the ground. To find out if these minor characteristics, or any additional knowledge about these words have any connection with the number of recorded usages, I have decided to analyse the words which have minimum or maximum number of records and compare them in pairs within each lexical field. They are the following: rose and daisy, shoulder and lung, and duck and lion. In the lexical field of flowers the word 'rose' scored high, had two recorded metaphorical usages, while 'daisy' had only one. COD writes that 'rose' also means ' gather life's roses - seek pleasure

, and ' path strewn with roses - life of delights'-, LDCE records ' be not all roses - (infml) to include some unpleasant things' and in AHD under the headword there is 'roses That which is marked by favor, success, or ease of execution'. The conclusion from the above usages is that 'rose' is seen as something representing beauty, causing delight, enjoyment and all the possible associations with beauty (that in fact can be numerous) might be exploited in the metaphors where the vehicle is the word 'rose'. The only metaphoric usage of 'daisy' is as it is 109