SSSJ part 1

A little later then originally planned, but here it is: the long-awaited Slovník súčasného slovenského jazyka (henceforth: SSSJ), volume 1, letters A-G. 1.134 pages, 30.293 headwords, 3.680 phrasal units. With planned 7 or 8 volumes and more than 250.000 entries in total, it is the first comprehensive (a.k.a. "large-sized") dictionary of the Slovak language ever.
This would be the right place to say something about the history of Slovak lexicography, the ill-fated 1959-1968 Peciar's Slovník slovenského jazyka  (Dictionary of Slovak) and that lame-ass waste of paper called Krátky slovník slovenského jazyka (A Short Dictionary of Slovak). Unfortunately, blogger.com and/or Firefox 2 are still persisting in their quirky behavior and the way they refuse to publish what I've written is really ticking me off (hence the multiple-part series). And besides, hey, IT'S HERE! All those years of waiting, who cares about stuff like that when you can actually open an actual dictionary of Slovak and just read it?
So tell you what, I’ll just pick it up – oy, it's heavy! – and open it at random. Ah, perfect:

dilino [d-] -na pl. N -novia m. {róm.} expr. hlúpy, často pochabý človek (často nadávka); syn. truľo, pako: správa sa ako d.; nie som d.!; ty d.!; Vyčkával na mňa ako dilino [J. Beňo]; Otrávim ich ako ten dilino kone. On to myslel dobre, ja to myslím zle, ale urobím to lepšie. [J. Balco]

Let’s dissect the entry. First, we start with the headword:

dilino ...

Aside from simple non-derived words, a headword can be an abbreviation (ARO, DOS), a fixed phrase (Čierna hora) or even an affix (euro- or even, I kid you not, -gate). Derivatives – whether created by affixation or compounds – are generally listed independently of the main headword and thus all of the following words (derived from farba = color) have their own entries:

farbiť ...
farbička ...
farebný ...
farbivo ...
bezfarebný ...
dofarbiť ...

However, regular derived forms, like the passive participles farbený and dofarbený which also function as adjectives, are normally not listed as independent headwords at all.
In some cases, the entry only contains the headword and a reference to another entry preceded by an arrow (represented here by a forward slash). These are mostly spelling variants

gay1 / gej1

and occasionally certain derivatives (like the following diminutive which crossreferences the simple headword):

fúrka / fúra

(To be continued...)