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Description
This paper examines the mega-, macro-, and microstructure of all eight editions (2010–2024) of the Multilingual Dictionary of New Words (MDNW), published by the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for Translation, focusing on the treatment of Latvian and Lithuanian neologisms. Combining qualitative source analysis with quantitative and qualitative analysis of the extracted material, the study compiled a dataset of 184 neologism occurrences, corresponding to 87 unique lexical units (69 Latvian, 18 Lithuanian). The analysis shows that the dictionary’s macrostructure evolved from an early, hierarchically nested entry format toward a flatter, integrated one, and that its editorial model shifted from a cumulative index that retained every Latvian headword extracted from the 4th through the 7th editions (2013–2019) to a non-cumulative index in the 8th edition (2024) that included only the most recently attested words. These findings indicate that the MDNW applies no single, stable criterion of lexical “novelty” throughout its publication history, raising the broader question of how lexicographers should define the temporal scope of a “new word” and communicate it to dictionary users.