Discussing the differences between terminological and machine lexica, the authors take the TEAM database as an example of a terminological database, and the METAL lexica as an example of MT lexica. They discuss lexicon comparison and criteria for a lexicon standard. Next, they discuss a multifunctional lexicon. They embark upon lexical units, lexicon structure, monolingual lexicon structuring and transfer lexicon structuring. Moreover, they embark upon database contents, stating that monolingual information and transfer information should be available in the multilingual lexicon. Next, they describe the fields that should be present in the database in somewhat more detail. Moreover, they look into software aspects needed for this particular application, discussing lexical database software, interfaces and uses interaction, import/export facilities and defaulters and lexical rules.