The paper offers a comparative analysis of the dictionary defi nitions
of the adjective terrifi c in Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-
Webster’s as the two major dictionaries of the English language with
the selected contexts of its use. The analysis reveals that both diction-
aries fail to identify the core sense of this word; besides, they provide
inconsistent and confl icting defi nitions of its derived senses, failing to
clearly distinguish between the positively and negatively charged con-
texts. The paper demonstrates that the problem is caused by the super-
fi cial treatment of the context in identifying the meaning of the word.
The adjective terrifi c is regarded as a word with a rich ambivalent core
meaning consistently used in literary texts and analytical journalism.
It is this meaning that accounts for the coexistence of the two derived
senses with the opposing evaluative potential.
Keywords: word meaning, polysemy, context, corpus, lexicography.
1. Smirnova A., Tolochin I. Terrible Angels: Semantic Ambivalence and Polysemy /
GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies 153 Volume 18 (3), August 2018. URL:
http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2018-1803-09 (дата обращения: 18.02.2019).
2. Smirnova A. “Where is the bank?” or how to “fi nd” different senses of a word.
URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4946291/ (дата обращения:
18.02.2019).
