This dissertation explores the challenge of sense delineation from lexicographic, cognitive-linguistic and ontological perspectives. The dissertation's main argument is that sense delineation in WordNet and the theoretical advances in cognitive linguistics, especially in the implementation of Frame Semantics in the FrameNet database, can improve the process of sense delineation. In addition, the recent advances in lexicography can enhance the accessibility of the WordNet and FrameNet databases. Three experiments were conducted to test these theoretical arguments. The experiments assessed the influence of cognitive-linguistic, ontological and lexicographic approaches to sense delineation on university students' decoding and encoding performances in a dictionary consultation context. The experiments focused on the senses delineated by different language resources and the examples provided to represent them.