The aim of this thesis is to analyze Korean verb 'eat' with regard to the array of senses of polysemy in a practical lexical dictionary. It is quite confusing that there is no clear standard to distinguish polysemy 'eat' from homonym 'eat' in dictionaries. The study investigates how to arrange the meanings of polysemy in dictionaries that are published to offer information about words.
First, this thesis studies the descriptions of polysemy in dictionaries and the problems found in it by focusing on the meanings and descriptions of 'eat' in each dictionary in order to deal with all the various meanings of the polysemy in different dictionaries.
Second, according to Rosch's Prototype Theory, polysemy's meanings are divided into a central meaning and marginal meanings. The central meaning is the typical and essential meaning to represent all the meanings, while marginal meanings are extended and transformed meanings from the central meaning in a lexical category.
Third, 'central meaning' and 'marginal meaning' are classified as its sense and the order of meaning arrangement 'marginal meaning' is suggested by Heine. He asserts that lexical meanings are extended as 'person>object>action>place>time>quality'. The study is to judge whether the order of meaning arrangement is appropriate as the standard for the arrangement of polysemy's meanings. The appropriateness is decided by the correspondence the order of meaning arrangement with the frequency in use of the word. This method of measurement is based on frequency asymmetry in cognitive semantics - the closer meaning to a central meaning a word has, the more frequently the word is used. A dictionary becomes practical and useful as reflecting the frequency in use of a word on the order of the meaning arrangement. Consequently, the dictionary conveys the information about meanings effectively.
Fourth, reorder the meanings of 'eat' as comparing the array of polysemy's senses in dictionaries with the order of polysemy's meaning arrangement based on the check in how frequently the polysemy is used in reality. As I mentioned earlier, moreover, this thesis shows a variety of instances about polysemy's meanings for the sake of supplement to the lack of examples in dictionaries with the quotations from 'Korean National Corpus in the 21st Century Sejong Project'.
It is difficult to meet all the needs of a variety of dictionaries use. However, it is worthwhile to keep studying polysemy's meanings not in the expert dictionaries for linguists, but in the practical dictionaries for non-linguists such as students and foreigners studying Korean on the purpose to make non-linguists comprehend information in polysemy's senses and acquire the meanings of polysemy effectively.