This post covers definitions of English words and how to find the other words to which you need to provide extra attention. Each of these will be covered in subsequent posts.
1. When you double-click on a word, a dictionary will open to that word some of the time. The requirements for this to work:
- you must have a dictionary in the appropriate language (English opens an English dictionary; Spanish opens a Spanish dictionary
- the word must be in a form known to the dictionary i.e. the computer is not calculating the base word (lemma) through a stemming routine
If the dictionary does not provide satisfactory results, e.g. the COED lacks pronunciation, one may use the parallel resources button to open a different dictionary.
The selected dictionary will appear in the same panel opened to the appropriate entry when present.
2. You may see the same information by using the Information Panel found under Tools --> Lookup --> Information. Here there is no easy access to alternative dictionaries.
3. One controls the dictionaries used by prioritizing dictionaries in the order you wish to have them searched. In this case, when I ask for a definition of an English word, first the COED is checked. If the word is not found, the MWCD will be searched; if the word is still not found, Logos will continue down the list of resources with English headwords indexes as shown above in parallel resources.
To determine which dictionaries you wish to prioritize:
Many English dictionaries in our system already have inflected forms of the words in their headword index, which lets a lookup on that form go to the right article already. This is much more accurate than using stemming. . . .
The ones I found are:
I'll submit a suggestion to add more headwords to other dictionaries.
Interesting how the M-W 10th edition has the extra headwords, but the 11th edition doesn't. I power-looked-up "disciples", and the 10th was in the list but the 11th wasn't.
In spite of the 11th having more entries and more pictures, I've kept the 10th first in the priority list because it has better formatting.
4. Words that may need special attention include proper nouns; references to person, places, things, and events that have cultural importance. For example, referring to George Washington and cherry tree in the same sentence is a signal that one needs to know the story of George chopping down a cherry tree and the response "I cannot tell a lie". The same thing happens frequently in the Bible. There are sections of the Passage Guide that helps us find these words.
5. In the Biblical Events section you are looking for Events mentioned ... these are the events the pericope expects you to know.
When the Biblical Event section only has Events occurring you are in the passage that actually presents the event happening. In Biblical People you are generally looking for people with proper names e.g. Moses but some characters of importance (e.g. the Samaritan Woman aka the Woman at the Well) are not named
The Biblical Places section identifies geographical features that may be important. Logos 7 brought a new resource to study these. See Beitzel, Barry J., and Kristopher A. Lyle, eds. Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels. Lexham Geographic Commentary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.
Biblical Things is a place to identify items of cultural importance and items where applying a modern image would misrepresent the image intended by the author.
6. Figurative language is important as this implies that the literal meaning of the words is not the intended meaning. One can limit the search to the pericope under study and use the Information Panel for interpretation ... well you could if there wasn't a bug making it not appear in the information panel.
7. However using hover or the right click Content Menu does display the desired information.
8. Some Figures of Speech related to specific words, other refer to larger units of language. But again a search on the pericope can be useful. Here the system correctly displays the details in the Information Panel.
9. Finally, looking words up in the Bible Sense Lexicon may provide information not obtainable from a straight dictionary or lexicon. The BSL is accessed via the right-click Context Menu
10. Okay, so my choice of examples wasn't terribly interesting.
This overview shows you how to find what you need to know; the next posts will be on how to find and learn the appropriate information.
