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Lexicography
A dictionary entry gathers attestations and editorial judgments. Its first English gloss is not the meaning of every token. Follow the lemma, grammatical category, dated examples and cited contexts before choosing a rendering.
Lexicography
The lemma
A dictionary groups forms under a headword or lemma. The lemma may be a conventionally selected citation form, not a form found in the passage. To look up an inflected token, identify its likely stem and ending, then test all plausible lemmas against the sentence. A parser can offer candidates; it cannot decide a damaged sign or a syntactic relationship by itself.
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A reading check
Worked question
A search tool returns one lemma for an ambiguous written form. What do you record?
Show the analysis
Record the tool’s suggestion as a candidate, then verify inflection, context and dictionary citations. Retain other plausible lemmas until the evidence rules them out.