I’m not sure how aware dictionary editors are of what they really do.
I can only offer a retelling of a retelling of a course on the subject, but the answer seems to be “somewhat”. They are taught to list hyperonyms and hyponyms of whatever it is they are trying to define, and then isolate the most typical ones. Of course, a perfect implementation of this idea alone is not the OED, it’s WordNet.
I can only offer a retelling of a retelling of a course on the subject, but the answer seems to be “somewhat”. They are taught to list hyperonyms and hyponyms of whatever it is they are trying to define, and then isolate the most typical ones. Of course, a perfect implementation of this idea alone is not the OED, it’s WordNet.
Apparently, the authors of the NIST Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures were quite aware of this approach as well.