Matti Vartiala, a young civil engineer, has a problem: He is reading an English instruction sheet on surveying, which says he should ’…take a test sample of bulk soil.’’ Matti isn’t certain of what the words bulk soil mean. Click onwards to see how he deals with the problem…

He knows already that bulk soil has something to do with ground testing. The word soil is familiar: it means earth or ground; In civil engineering it refers to ’a particular kind of fragmentary material’.

He wants to know the exact meaning of bulk soil, because he feels that it could mean at least two different things: 1)soil that can be bought in bulk or 2) a layer of soil in the ground.

He consults an English –Finnish engineering dictionary, which should give the translation. See what the dictionary says…

This dictionary should include a lot of technical words…

But technical dictionaries sometimes fail in giving translations to compound words…

The word bulk, on its own, however, leads to a lot of different translations. They often refer to ’irto-’, which would support Matti’s first guess: soil that can be bought in bulk (’irtomaa’). But this is not enough evidence for Matti…

Matti doesn’t get any help from this dictionary, so he tries another online dictionary, an English-English dictionary…

As you can see, dictionaries often don’t include compound words.

So, bulk refers to something in large amounts or the main part of something. This is no news… Matti wants to try out another dictionary, Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary. It should be pretty coprehensive. Look at the results...

Cambridge Dictionary cannot find the whole compound word, but offers definitions of the first word, bulk. Based on them, both of Matti’s guesses could be right. So, this doesn’t help either.

Matti had already guessed these two options! He knows now he has to use other means than dictionaries to find an exact description. What about search engines

Matti uses Encarta search engine to look for any clues to the meaning of the word.

This search engine, however, requires a registration fee in order to get a full description of the word and articles where it is used.

So, Matti moves on.

Search engines and encyclopedias can help when you are looking for a word that is not listed in dictionaries. Still, you cannot count on finding everything there. Special vocabulary and spoken language is often not included in them. Matti still decides to use Google to find the meaning. He enters bulk soil as his search key, but later also words bulk soil and maakerros

The Google search results in thousands of web sites with the requested words. Matti takes a look at the most promising ones on the first page. Can you guess which one of these proves to be the most helpfull one?

1)This site seems to be meant for gardeners. Here, you can get contact information of different material suppliers. It seems bulk soil is something you can buy, isn’t it? But this is all Matti finds on this site.

2) This one seems to be similar. The company sells gardening materials, for example bulk soil. Doesn’t it look promising?

These are different types of bulk soil that are on sale. So, judging from these two sites, bulk soil is used to mean soil that is sold in bulk. But is it the only meaning?

3) There was also a link to this website, which looks like a scientific paper. It deals with soil tests, so it could be very useful. Scan the text quickly through and find the lines where bulk soil is mentioned. What does it mean in this context?

Here, bulk soil means the soil of grapes that are grown in pots and especially in the area where there are no plant roots. Does this help at all?

4)This site looks scientific, too. Where can you find bulk soil mentioned? Does this text help in finding the meaning of the words Matti is looking for?

It doesn’t tell much about what is meant by bulk soil… does it?

So far, Matti hasn’t found what he is looking for – a translation or an exact description for bulk soil. If you were in his shoes, would you quit at this point? Click on the answer below. NoYes

How sure are you about the meaning of the word? What are your reasons for that? Would you want to check the meaning somewhere else or in some other way? Where? From whom? backforward

There are a lot of other options to search for the meaning of a word. Matti can look for glossaries (often just wordlists), use traditional paper versions of dictionaries (there are some quite extensive ones), ask a professional, a colleague, or some other person, for instance. If the word is really important for your work, you will need to continue looking for its meaning. Finally, you will have to make the final decision about the meaning of the word. Continue…

Now it’s your turn to practise! Find the meanings of the following words in online dictionaries! Click on…

Text sample: …[The first known cell-phone virus, Cabir, is entirely innocuous. All it does is sit in the phone and try to spread itself. Other cell-phone viruses, however, are not as harmless.]… Turn off Bluetooth discoverable mode. Set your phone to "hidden" so other phones can't detect it and send it the virus. You can do this on the Bluetooth options screen. Source: How cell-Phone Viruses Work by Julia Layton HowStuffWorks, Inc. howstuffworks.com What’s the meaning of innocuous, sit and discoverable? See the full article here.

Text sample: …[ The first known cell-phone virus, Cabir, is entirely innocuous. All it does is sit in the phone and try to spread itself. Other cell-phone viruses, however, are not as harmless.]… Turn off Bluetooth discoverable mode. Set your phone to "hidden" so other phones can't detect it and send it the virus. You can do this on the Bluetooth options screen. Source: How cell-Phone Viruses Work by Julia Layton HowStuffWorks, Inc. howstuffworks.com Infer the meaning of the highlighted words with the help of these questions. 1) Can you guess from the sentence? 2) Does the topic help you? 3) Does the word have a familiar prefix or suffix? 4) What could the stem of the word be? 5) Is it a noun, a verb, an adjective? 6) Is it the subject, the verb or the object of the sentence? 7) What does it look like? Does it resemble some other word? 8)What would it sound like? 9) What style is it? Formal/casual? The full article here.

Now, if you are not sure of the meaning of these words, look them up in a dictionary or some other source. See a presentation of an online dictionary on innocuous here. Click here to gethere to dictionary links. Go to tasksto tasks

Some links to dictionaries: OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (Eng-Eng) EURODICAUTOM (e.g. Eng- Fin-Eng) MERRIAM-WEBSTER Dictionary (Eng-Eng) OneLook Dictionaries WORDSMYTH: dictionary and other information on English words Tekniikan Sanastokeskuksen termipankki Terminology Collection: specialist dictionaries