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The representation of medical adjectives in Croatian general dictionaries reveals significant inconsistencies, reflected in uneven lemma inclusion, ambigous or absent domain labels, and limited definitional precision. This paper analyzes the 80 most frequent adjectives, based on corpus data from the Croatian Medical Corpus (CMC) (Kocijan, Kurolt & Mijić, 2020), in the three major Croatian general dictionaries: Veliki rječnik hrvatskoga standardnog jezika (2015), Hrvatski enciklopedijski rječnik (2002), and Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika (2000). The analysis focuses on lemma status, the presence of domain labels, and the accuracy of definitions.
To contextualize the Croatian practice, the study includes a brief comparison with Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2025), which demonstrates better lemma coverage and more terminologically informed definitions, but also exhibits inconsistencies that reflect the broader challenges of systematically representing medical adjectives in general lexicography.
The paper's findings reveal inconsistencies in Croatian lexicographic practice and highlight the need for more conceptually grounded, corpus-based approaches that integrate terminological precision with lexicographic usability.
