2. 考研
  3. No reference book, perhaps no book of any kind except the Bible, is so widely used as "the dictionary". Even houses that have fe

No reference book, perhaps no book of any kind except the Bible, is so widely used as "the dictionary". Even houses that have fe

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问题     No reference book, perhaps no book of any kind except the Bible, is so widely used as "the dictionary". Even houses that have few books or none at all possess at least one dictionary; most business offices have dictionaries, and most typists keep a copy on their desks; at one time or another most girls and boys are required by their teachers to obtain and use a dictionary.
    Admittedly, the dictionary is often used merely to determine the correct spelling of words, or to find out the accepted pronunciation, and such a use is perhaps not the most important from an intellectual point of view. Dictionaries may, however, have social importance, for it is often a matter of some concern to the person using the dictionary for such purpose that he should not suggest to others, by misspelling a word in a letter, or mispronouncing it in conversation, that he is not "well-bred", and has not been well educated.
    Yet, despite this familiarity with the dictionary, the average person is likely to have many wrong ideas about it, and little idea of how to use it profitably, or interpret it rightly. For example, it is often believed that the mere presence of a word in a dictionary is evidence that it is acceptable in good writing. Though most dictionaries have a system of marking words as obsolete, or in use only as slang, many people, more especially if their use of a particular word has been challenged, are likely to conclude, if they find it in a dictionary, that it is accepted as being used by writers of established reputation. This would certainly have been true of dictionaries a hundred years or so ago. For a long time after they were first firmly established in the eighteenth century, their aim was to include only what was used by the best writers, and all else was suppressed, and the compiler frequently claimed that this dictionary contained "low" words. Apparently this aspect of the dictionary achieved such importance in the mind of the average person that most people today are unaware of the great change that has taken place in the compilation of present-day dictionaries.
    Similarly, the ordinary man invariably supposes that one dictionary is as good and authoritative as another, and, moreover, believes that "the dictionary" has absolute authority, and quotes it to clinch arguments. Although this is an advantage, in that the dictionary presents a definition the basic meaning of which can’t be altered by the speaker, yet it could be accepted only if all dictionaries agreed on the particular point in question. But ultimately the authority of the dictionary rests only on the authority of the man who compiled it, and, however careful he may be, a dictionary-maker is fallible: reputable dictionaries may disagree in their judgments, and indeed different sections of the same dictionary may differ.
By "the great change" in present-day dictionaries, the author implies that
选项 A、dictionaries seem to have many wrong ideas in them for the average persons.
B、many average persons do not know how to use the dictionaries profitably.
C、words appearing in a present-day dictionary may not be acceptable in good writing.
D、dictionaries have different systems of marking the words they contain.
答案C
解析 推论题。文章第三段后半部分指出，自从18世纪词典首次得到明确规定后，很长时间以来，词典的宗旨就只是用来收录最优秀的作家所使用的词汇，所有其他的词汇都被禁止收录，所以编辑者总是宣称这样的词典收录的词汇“少”；显然，词典的这个方面在普通入的心目中占据了如此重要的位置，以至于如今大多数人们并不知道现代的词典编辑工作己发生过巨大的变化。这说明，优秀的写作中可能不认同现代词典中出现的词汇。这与C项的意思相符。A、B是文中明确说明的，不必推论就可知结果，所以不对；文中只是说“尽管大多数词典有一套标明某些单词已弃用的体系”，并没有说“词典在标明其所收录的词汇方面有不同的体系”，所以D不对。
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