Towards a Glossary of Rum Making and Rum Tasting

A lexicographic work exclusively dedicated to the making and tasting of rum has not been published to date. With the ambitious aim of filling such editorial gap in mind, this article focuses on the implementation stage of a specialized glossary of rum-related terms in the English language. Preceded by an overview of the historical, geographical and linguistic factors that made rum a renowned global product, the computer-assisted terminology acquisition procedures applied in order to extract rum-related terms from an ad hoc corpus are described. By merging computer-assisted term extraction with data collected from experts’ knowledge, fieldwork and the existing specialized literature on rum, a list of candidate headwords was drafted. The replicability of the methodology applied makes this pilot study generalizable, thus fostering the compilation of specialized glossaries connected to other fields or disciplines.