Word etymology in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries: lexicographers2 versus EFL learners2 perspectives

This paper deals with the treatment of word etymology in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. It also investigates EFL learners' attitudes towards the importance of etymology for understanding the meaning of the words they look up in dictionaries. The data were collected through tasks of looking up Arabic loan words in English in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. The results indicate that most monolingual and bilingual dictionaries do not provide information on word etymology. They also show that most Arab EFL learners find etymology helpful in understanding the meaning of English words of Arabic origin. Introduction Since the late 17th century English general-purpose monolingual dictionaries have included information about the etymology of words (Stockwell & Minkova, 2001). The origin of many English words is indicated as being French, Latin, Greek, German, Hindi and Arabic. There are perhaps as many as 10,000 English words derived from Arabic. This study is an investigation of how English words of Arabic origin are dealt with in English monolingual dictionaries and English-Arabic bilingual dictionaries. It is also an attempt to find out how important EFL learners consider knowing the origin of such words in understanding their meaning. Methodology The study is based on the treatment of 10 Arabic loan words in English in 4 monolingual and 3 bilingual dictionaries. They were chosen from a list of such words given in Al-Mawrid Dictionary (1997). Their etymology was verified in the Dictionary of Words Origin (1975). The words were: massage, algebra, candy, chap, garble, shifty, syrup, safari, cumin, tariff. The monolingual dictionaries used were: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) (1989), Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) (1987), Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (WD) (1997) and the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) (1991). The bilingual dictionaries