The Stoddart Visual Dictionary

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

This is a very useful book, consisting of 3000 illustrations covering 25000 words, along with 85 pages of indexes. It is a major Canadian work, originally published in French in Quebec and here translated for the English-speaking audience. In many ways it is similar to the French-language visual dictionaries published by Robert and Larousse. But this one is Canadian, and it covers technical subjects such as microcomputers, health and medical instruments, weapons, and modern symbols. Here, for example, one can find the terms used for describing a Greek temple, a man’s vest, a high fidelity stereo speaker, a railroad crossing signal, or a strip mine.

There are some shortcomings. For instance, there is nothing here on various types of food (fruits and vegetables), nor on basketry as a craft. And while a word appears for a picture (or part thereof), there is no derivation of that word. The front of a trench coat might indeed be a “gun flap,” but no dictionary I own will tell me where that term comes from; I need to use a haberdasher dictionary. While there is a display of the parts of a horse and the names, there is nothing for sheep, cow, or pig — until the reader comes to the hanging meat section, where Freddy the pig is all stretched out for carving (along with Muriel the cow and Lana the lamb). Vegetarians might object to this, and rightly so. Nevertheless, the book is a bargain at the price for the coverage it does give.