Let us see how dictionaries are made and how editors arrive at definitions. The task of writing a dictionary begins with the reading of vast amounts of the {{U}}(47) {{/U}} of the period or the subject that the dictionary is to cover. As editors read, they copy on cards every interesting or rare word, every unusual or {{U}}(48) {{/U}} occurrence of a common word, a large number of common words in their ordinary uses, and also the sentences in which each of these words appears, thus:
pail
The daily pails bring home increase of milk.
Keats, Endymion
The {{U}}(49) {{/U}} of each word is collected, along with the word itself. For a really big job of dictionary writing, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, millions of such cards are collected, and the task of editing {{U}}(50) {{/U}} decades. As the cards are collected, they are alphabetized and {{U}}(51) {{/U}} When the sorting is completed, there will be for each word anywhere from two or three to several hundred {{U}}(52) {{/U}} quotations, each on its card. Each of the cards {{U}}(53) {{/U}} an actual use of the word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. The editor reads the cards {{U}}(54) {{/U}}, discards some, re-read the rest, and finally he writes his definitions. He cannot be {{U}}(55) {{/U}} by what he thinks a given word ought to mean. He must work according to the cards, or not at all.
The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up {{U}}(56) {{/U}} statements about the "true meaning" of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors of in the distant or immediate past. The writer of a dictionary is a historian, not a lawgiver.
A) cautiously I) consciously
B) points J) context
C) literature K) peculiar
D) familiar L) environment
E) influenced M) sorted
F) occupies N) represents
G) significant O) authoritative
H) illustrative