The Arabic dictionary and the real usage of the Arabic language

Abstract

Most of the Arabic dictionaries compiled from the Renaissance until the mid-twentieth century typically exhibit two main characteristics: reliance on ancient dictionaries and extracting from them what appears to be necessary for contemporary Arab intellectuals in our era, or what frequently appears in old or modern texts. This is done without resorting to any scientific measure, relying instead on intuition or a sense of what is needed, guided by distinguished scholars with extensive knowledge and deep understanding of the Arabic language, especially its vocabulary and meanings. This must be acknowledged. They often do not refer back to the objective use of the Arabic language beyond their knowledge acquired from such usage, unlike our ancient scholars who documented Arab speech, or as modern linguists do today. The second characteristic is their avoidance of comprehensive documentation of actual usage in classical Arabic or its historical usage, such as a large corpus of texts serving as a documented reference showcasing the true usage of Classical Arabic.