In most dictionaries and manuals lexicography is defined as “the writing and making of dictionaries”. This definition implies that lexicography is concerned mainly with the principles underlying the making of dictionaries. This is quite true; lexicography does consider the prob
lems and principles a lexicographer is faced with when he sits down to make a new dictionary. This huge product of lexicographic activity has become an object of consideration too, and it also falls within the scope of lexicography. To develop a full awareness of the problems in exicography and the ways to their solution, a scholar is advised to get acquainted first with the exicographic legacy he has come into and secondly, that it presents a clear-cut field of human innterest.
