From 1950 to 1965, we can separate off an initial period in which one needs to draw a distinction between lexicography, the study of works, and lexicography in the traditional sense of the term that is, the actual compilation of dictionaries. The last 30 years have been particularly rich in lexicography: never before have so many dictionaries been published and never before has so much literature about dictionaries appeared. It has come to be called “metalexicography”. The word metalexicography is derived from the French ‘metalexicographie’, apparently coined by Rey and Delesalle (1979). It is now frequently used to refer to the activities of anyone who writes about lexicography but doesn’t write dictionaries. Dictionaries are such mirrors that reflect societies. According to this, lexicography has obviously entered a phase of self-examination: we have begun to wonder why the dictionaries that we have inherited from previous generations are what they are, and whether they are adapted to our times. One of the main problems at the outset in compiling the dictionary is to decide what to put in and what to omit. In the first place it is not easy to decide what a literary term really is, because, by most standards, it is a vague classification. It is true that lexicography has been the poor relative of linguistics and the interest for lexis has always been alive.