<em>Svenska Akademiens ordlista</em> genom 140 år: mot fjortonde upplagan

Resumé

Physically speaking, the Glossary of the Swedish Academy (SAOL, Svenska Akademiens ordlista) is not an imposing dictionary. It is, however, a minor classic within Swedish lexicography. Beginning in 1874 with a small word list of about 35,000 lemmas, it is now a more dictionary-like product with about 125,000 entries (13th edition 2006). This paper gives a historical survey of the SAOL focused on the upcoming 14th edition (2015). Apart from the increase in the number of lemmas, the improvement of the semantic descriptions is worth noting. The main task of the SAOL is still to function as an orthographic and inflectional norm, but since the 10th edition, the need for more – and somewhat more elaborate – definitions has gradually grown stronger. In the 14th edition, this trend will continue. Thus, apart from a set of very basic (and monosemous) words, every entry word should have some kind of explanation, explicitly or implicitly (by means of references etc.). To achieve this within the limited space available, certain default conventions are necessary.