Macmillan English Dictionary

for Advanced Learners

By Oleksandr Kurylo
What is it?
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, also known as MEDAL, was first
published in 2002 by Macmillan Education. MEDAL is an advanced learner’s dictionary and
shares most of the features of this type of dictionary: it provides definitions in simple
language, using a controlled defining vocabulary; most words have example sentences to
illustrate how they are typically used; and information is given about how words combine
grammatically or in collocations. MEDAL also introduced a number of innovations.
Innovations

 ‘collocation boxes’ giving lists of high-frequency collocates, identified using Sketch

Engine software
 word frequency information, with the most frequent 7500 English words shown in red and
categorised in three frequency bands, based on the idea, derived from Zipf's law, that a
relatively small number of high-frequency words account for a high percentage of most
texts
 ‘metaphor boxes’, showing how the vocabulary used for expressing common concepts
(such as ‘anger’) tends to reflect a common metaphorical framework. This is based on
George Lakoff’s ideas of conceptual metaphor
 a 50-page section providing guidance on writing academic English, based on a
collaboration with the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics in Louvain, Belgium and
using the Centre’s learner corpus data
Online dictionary

The Macmillan English Dictionary also exists as an electronic dictionary, available free on the
Web. Like most online dictionaries, it benefits from being able to update content regularly
with new words and meanings. In addition to the dictionary, the online version has a thesaurus
function enabling users to find synonyms for any word, phrase or meaning.
There is also a blog (the Macmillan Dictionary Blog) with daily postings on language issues,
especially on global English and language change. An "Open Dictionary" allows users to
provide their own dictionary entries for new words they have come across. The online edition
has been recognised as a good example of this emerging genre of reference publishing.
Example of searching
Thank you for attention!