Legal Terms in the 1936 and 2013 Lithuanian Dictionaries of International Words: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The article analyses and compares the legal terms and their adjectival components recorded in the Lithuanian dictionaries of international words published in 1936 and 2013 (DIW 1936 and DIW 2013). The aim of studying the collected material is to evaluate the significance of these dictionaries for the legal language of the respective periods of independent Lithuania. A comparable number of legal terms and adjective components was recorded in both dictionaries (DIW 1936 – 738, DIW 2013 – 748). It may be concluded that DIW 1936 was a meticulously prepared and valuable source of legal terminology for its time, whereas the impact and significance of DIW 2013 for legal language are considerably lesser, because, firstly, the relative frequency of legal terminology decreased in DIW 2013 compared to DIW 1936, and secondly, during the latter period, legal terminology had already been extensively recorded and disseminated across a wide-ranging publicly accessible specialised sources.