En SAOB-artikel växer fram

Resumé

This article presents a specific example of how the work of an editor
of the comprehensive historical Swedish dictionary, published
by the Swedish Academy, (SAOB) proceeds. The example concerns
the Swedish preposition under ’under’ and accurately describes the
process of writing that SAOB entry. Drawing from this particular
word, it is shown how etymology governs also the semantic description,
on what principles the different meanings of a word is
either divided into different main sections or kept together within
one and the same main section, how SAOB deals with borderline
cases, how the description interacts with already written parts of
the dictionary, how the main sections may be grouped together in
bigger subgroups, how subordinate sections are distinguished and
furthermore how the use of a word in compounds may influence on
the description of the simplex word.