He was section editor for lexicography in the second edition of the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (ELL2; 2005), edited by Keith Brown, for which he commissioned survey articles on lexicography in all the world's major languages and on major issues in lexicography and lexicology. He edited a multivolume collection covering all aspects of lexicology for Routledge, and, with Rachel Giora, a companion collection covering all aspects of metaphor and figurative language.
Patrick Hanks is author of many papers on lexical analysis, lexicography, onomastics, and similes and metaphor. He is editor in chief of the Dictionary of American Family Names (3 volumes, OUP 2003), and is co-author with Flavia Hodges and Kate Hardcastle of the Oxford Dictionary of First Names (1990, 2006).