According to someone on Stack Exchange, quoting the NY Times, quoting the Chief Editor of the OED [1], 'there are for the verb-form alone of “run” no fewer than 645 meanings'. Other common words with huge numbers of meanings include "put" and "set".

[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/42480/words-with...

And I'm sure some of those are obscure meanings, but the likelihood is I'm never going to look them up. Exclude those many definitions of "run" and either make the dictionary a bit smaller (easier to search) or include several rare word definitions in the same space.

Removing a handful of thousands of common words won't make the OED noticeably shorter, and it's not space constrained anyway.

And I don't think a rare use of a common word is any less likely to be looked up than a rare word.

I don't mean the full OED. Personally I have a Pocket Oxford and a Concise Oxford. Both are space constrained. The Pocket Oxford in particular has around 60,000 words so leaving out the most common 5-10K would make a noticeable difference. Since it's the complex words that get left out in small dictionaries, as you decrease dictionary size, the size saving that you'd get from removing common words proportionally increases. But you might be right that it wouldn't make enough of a difference, since small dictionaries can also fit less words in total. It might never be enough to matter much.

I want exactly the opposite - to be able to construct dictionaries where there are no words used in definitions that don't also have their own entries. To me this is a key feature of a dictionary - definition completeness.

And its one of the reasons I'd like to know about the toolset used to construct dictionaries - I'd give anything to be able to throw a word set at these tools, have a custom dictionary constructed from it, and repeat until unity...

I actually assumed that was already a general rule, because any word I've ever cross referenced in a dictionary has always been there. In fact, in the diminutive "Little" Oxford[1] there are few enough words available for definitions that you can get stuck in a loop between two words! Although there's always at least one other synonym word in the definitions.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Little-Oxford-English-Dictionary/dp/B...

I'd really love to know the technology behind lexicography, as a state of the art. If anyone works in this field, any pointers you might provide are highly appreciated.

I understand that unity is a difficult thing to attain in dictionaries, but perhaps there are tools and methods used by lexicographers that I need to learn about, as an interested party.

I know this isn't exactly what you meant but I have found it surprisingly useful (and fun!):

https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Thesaurus-Sophisticated-Alte...