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Dạng bài Đọc hiểu lớp 12

The word “literature” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ______ .

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, Cor D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions .

It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning, that we learn these meanings principally from teachers and grammarians, and that dictionaries and grammars are the supreme authority in matters of meaning and usage. Few people ask by what authority the writers of dictionaries and grammars say what they say.

Let us see how dictionaries are made and how the editors arrive at definitions. What follows applies, incidentally, only to those dictionary offices where first-hand, original research goes on—not those in which editors simply copy existing dictionaries. The task of writing a dictionary begin with the reading of vast amounts of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to cover. As the editors read the copy on cards every interesting or rare word, every unusual or peculiar occuirence 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. That is to say, the context 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 occupies decades. As the cards are collected, they are alphabetized and sorted. When the sorting is completed, there will be for each word anywhere from two to three to several hundred illustrative quotations, each on its card. To define a word, then, the dictionary editor places before him the stack of cards illustrating that word; each of the cards represents an actual use of the word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. He reads the cards carefully, discards some rereads the rest, and divides up the stack according to what he thinks are the several senses of the word. Finally, he writes his definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule that each definition must be based on what the quotation in front of him reveal about the meaning of the word. The editor cannot be influenced by what he thinks a given word ought to mean. He must work according to the cards.

The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the "true meanings" of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past. The writer of a dictinnary historian, not a lawgiver.[...] To regard the dictionary as an "authority”, therefore, is to credit the dictionary writer with gifts of prophecy which neither he nor anyone else possesses. In choosing our words when we speakor write, we can be guided by the historical record afforded us dictionary, but we cannot be bound by it, because new experiences, new inventions, new feelings, are always compelling us to give new uses to old words.

Câu 18888: The word “literature” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ______ .

A. poetry and compositions

B. written documents

C. literary works

D. poems and essays

Câu hỏi : 18888
  • Đáp án : B
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