Characteristics
The Daijisen and Daijirin have much more in common than Matsumura's lexicographical supervision and similar ("Great fountain/forest of words") titles. These two dictionaries share many features of design and content. Both arrange word meanings with the most frequent ones first (like the American Heritage Dictionary), in contrast to the Kōjien tradition of arranging with the oldest recorded meanings first (like the Oxford English Dictionary). Compare their two respective definitions of hyōsetsu (剽窃 "plagiarize").
- Daijirin: 他人の作品・学説などを自分のものとして発表すること。"To take another person's works, theory, etc. and publish it as one's own."
- Daijisen: 他人の作品や論文を盗んで、自分のものとして発表すること。"To steal another person's works or writing and publish it as one's own."
Some similarities between these dictionaries are obvious: Matsumura's 2nd edition Daijirin (1995) added some full-color illustrations, including a chart of 168 color names (色の名) and his Daijisen (1995) included a color chart of 358 (カラーチャート色名).
The Daijisen is not wholly derivative of the Daijirin and has some notable differences. Daijisen improvements include visually appealing designs, more contemporary usage examples, and some helpful layout features. For instance, special columns indicate usage notes for topics including synonyms, suffixes, and even uncommon kanji pronunciations (nanori 名のり "special readings for names" and nandoku 難読 "difficult to read").
Read more about this topic: Daijisen