dictionary

A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. In a few languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the lemma form appears as the main word or headword in most dictionaries. Many dictionaries also provide pronunciation information; grammatical information; word derivations, histories, or etymologies; illustrations; usage guidance; and examples in phrases or sentences. Dictionaries are most commonly found in the form of a book.

Word order

Today, dictionaries of most languages with alphabetic and syllabic writing systems list words in alphabetical or some analogous phonetic order.

In many languages, words are grouped together according to their true or normal origin ("root"), and these roots are arranged alphabetically. If English dictionaries were arranged like this, the words "import", "export", "support", "report", "porter", "port", "important" and "transportation" would all be listed under "port". This method has the advantage that all words of a common origin are listed together, but the disadvantage is that you have to know how to disassemble all prefixes of a word before you look it up. Some Sanskrit dictionaries and all Arabic dictionaries work like this.

Dictionaries of languages using ideographic writing systems, such as Chinese and Japanese, may be sorted either according to one of many schemes based on the component parts of the characters (number of strokes, overall shape, or pronunciation of each letter), or according to the pronunciation of the full words when spelled phonetically. Due to the unfamiliarity of Chinese speakers with phonetic spellings, phonetic sorts are particularly unsuitable for Chinese dictionaries, while the fluency of Japanese speakers with kana makes kana spelling the most common and convenient method to sort Japanese dictionaries. (See collation for more information on linguistic sorting).

The first English alphabetical dictionary came out in 1604 and alphabetical ordering was a rarity until the 18th century. Before alphabetical listings, dictionaries were organized by topic, i.e. a list of animals all together in one topic.

Coverage

Dictionaries vary wildly in size and scope. A dictionary that attempts to cover as many words from a particular speech community as possible is called a maximizing dictionary (e.g. the Oxford English Dictionary), whereas a dictionary that attempts to cover only a limited selection of words from a speech community is called a minimizing dictionary (e.g. a dictionary containing the 2000 most frequently used words in the English language).

Special-purpose dictionaries

There are many different types of dictionaries, including bilingual, multilingual, historical, biographical, and geographical dictionaries.

Bilingual dictionaries

In bilingual dictionaries, each entry has translations of words in another language. For example, in a Japanese-English dictionary, the entry tsuki has the corresponding English word, moon. In dictionaries between English and a language using a non-Roman script, entry words in the non-English language may be either printed and sorted in the native order, or romanized and sorted in Roman alphabetical order.

Specialized dictionaries

Specialized dictionaries (also referred to as technical dictionaries) focus on linguistic and factual matters relating to specific subject fields. A specialized dictionary may have a relatively broad coverage, e.g. a picture dictionary, in that it covers several subject fields such as science and technology (a multi-field dictionary), or their coverage may be more narrow, in that they cover one particular subject field such as law (a single-field dictionary) or even a specific sub-field such as contract law (a sub-field dictionary). Specialized dictionaries may be maximizing dictionaries, i.e. they attempt to achieve comprehensive coverage of the terms in the subject field concerned, or they may be minimizing dictionaries, i.e. they attempt to cover only a limited number of the specialized vocabulary concerned. Generally, multi-field dictionaries tend to be minimizing, whereas single-field and sub-field dictionaries tend to be maximizing. See also LSP dictionary.

Character dictionaries

In East Asian languages, a dictionary form for Han (Chinese) characters has developed, called Kan-wa jiten (literally 'Han-Japanese dictionary') in Japanese and Okpyeon ('Jewel Book') in Korean. Each entry has one Chinese character with information about stroke count and order, readings (pronunciations), and a list of words using that character.

These characters are not arbitrary; they are composed of simpler characters, one of which is called the "radical", which indicates its category. The ordering of the characters in the dictionary is by radical, in order of the number of strokes in the radical. Characters using that radical are then ordered by the number of strokes added to the radical. To fit more strokes in a character, radicals can come in simplified variants, which have to be learned; for example, the character for "dog" is altered when it is used as the radical of the character for "cat".

Data dictionaries

Data sets and databases collected and utilized for statistical analyses are typically accompanied by, or able to be used to generate, a list of all variable names used within the data set, as well as matters such as their meaning, values, level of measurement, length, decimal allowances, and type (numeric, string, etc.)

Glossaries

Another variant is the glossary, an alphabetical list of defined terms in a specialized field, such as medicine or science. The simplest dictionary, a defining dictionary, provides a core glossary of the simplest meanings of the simplest concepts. From these, other concepts can be explained and defined, in particular for those who are first learning a language. In English, the commercial defining dictionaries typically include only one or two meanings of under 2000 words. With these, the rest of English, and even the 4000 most common English idioms and metaphors, can be defined.

Variations between dictionaries

Prescription and description

Dictionary makers apply two basic philosophies to the defining of words: prescriptive or descriptive. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is descriptive, and attempts to describe the actual use of words. Noah Webster, on the other hand, intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language, altered spellings and accentuated differences in meaning and pronunciation of numerous words. This is why American English now uses the spelling "color" while the rest of the world uses "colour". (See American and British English differences.) While disapproved of in the UK, the US spellings are universally understood; likewise the British spellings are not acceptable in America.

While descriptivists argue that prescriptivism is an unnatural attempt to dictate usage or curtail change, prescriptivists argue that to indiscriminately document "improper" or "inferior" usages sanctions those usages by default and causes language to deteriorate. Although the debate can become very heated, only a small number of controversial words are usually affected. But the softening of usage notations, from the previous edition, for two words, ain't and regardless, out of over 450,000 in Webster's Third in 1961, was enough to provoke outrage among many with prescriptivist leanings, who branded the dictionary as "permissive."

The prescriptive/descriptive issue has been given so much consideration in modern times that most dictionaries of English apply the descriptive method to definitions, while additionally informing readers of attitudes which may influence their choices on words often considered vulgar, offensive, erroneous, or easily confused. Merriam-Webster is subtle, only adding italicized notations such as, sometimes offensive or nonstand (nonstandard.) American Heritage goes further, discussing issues separately in numerous "usage notes." Encarta provides similar notes, but is more prescriptive, offering warnings and admonitions against the use of certain words considered by many to be offensive or illiterate, such as, "an offensive term for..." or "a taboo term meaning..."

Because of the broad use of dictionaries, and their acceptance by many as language authorities, their treatment of the language does affect usage to some degree, even the most descriptive dictionaries providing conservative continuity. In the long run, however, usage primarily determines the meanings of words in English, and the language is being changed and created every day. As Jorge Luis Borges says in the prologue to "El otro, el mismo": "It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature."

Other variations

Since words and their meanings develop over time, dictionary entries are organized to reflect these changes. Dictionaries may either list meanings in the historical order in which they appeared, or may list meanings in order of popularity and most common use.

Dictionaries also differ in the degree to which they are encyclopedic, providing considerable background information, illustrations, and the like, or linguistic, concentrating on etymology, nuances of meaning, and quotations demonstrating usage.

Any dictionary has been designed to fulfil one or more functions. The dictionary functions chosen by the maker(s) of the dictionary provide the basis for all lexicographic decisions, from the selection of entry words, over the choice of information types, to the choice of place for the information (e.g. in an article or in an appendix). There are two main types of function. The communication-oriented functions comprise text reception (understanding), text production, text revision, and translation. The knowledge-oriented functions deal with situations where the dictionary is used for acquiring specific knowledge about a particular matter, and for acquiring general knowledge about something. The optimal dictionary is one that contains information directly relevant for the needs of the users relating to one or more of these functions. It is important that the information is presented in a way that keeps the lexicographic information costs at a minimum.

History

The art and craft of writing dictionaries is called lexicography.

One of the earliest dictionaries known, and which is still extant today in an abridged form, was written in Latin during the reign of the emperor Augustus. It is known by the title De Significatu Verborum ("On the meaning of words") and was originally compiled by Verrius Flaccus. It was twice abridged in succeeding centuries, first by Festus, and then by Paul the Deacon. Verrius Flaccus' dictionary was an abridged list of difficult or antiquated words, whose usage was illustrated by quotations from early Roman authors.

The Erya, from the early 3rd century BC, was the first Chinese language dictionary. The book organized Chinese characters by semantic groups. The intention of this dictionary was to explain the true meaning and interpretation of words in the context of older ancient texts.

The word "dictionary" comes from neoclassical Latin, diccio, meaning simply "word".

The first true English dictionary was Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall of 1604, although it only included 3,000 words and the definitions it contained were little more than synonyms. The first one to be at all comprehensive was Thomas Blount's dictionary Glossographia of 1656. This was followed by Samuel Johnson's famous and more complete dictionary of 1755.

In 1806, Noah Webster's dictionary was published by the G&C Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts which still publishes Merriam-Webster dictionaries, but the term Webster's is considered generic and can be used by any dictionary.

The most complete dictionary of the English language is the Oxford English Dictionary. The first edition was properly begun in 1860 and was completed in 1928, by which time a supplement that took an additional five years to complete was already necessary.

Also see A Brief History of English Lexicography

Miscellaneous

The Irish mathematical physicist, J. L. Synge, created a game, Game of Circ, to emphasize the circular reasoning implicit in the defining process of any standard dictionary.

List of major dictionaries

Arabic

• Lisan Al-Arab
• Al-Qamoos Al-Muḥeeṭ
• Kitab al-Ayn
• Al-Mawrid
• Al Monjid
• Al Mujam al waseet
• Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

Breton

• Geriadur Brezhoneg an Here

Bulgarian

• New Spelling Dictionary of Bulgarian Language (Nov Pravopisen Rechnik na Balgarskiya Ezik, Institut za Balgarski Ezik, Sofiya, 2002)

Catalan

• Diccionari de l'Enciclopèdia Catalana
• Diccionari de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans
• Diccionari català-valencià-balear (DCVB) d’A. M. Alcover i F. de B. Moll

Chinese

• Erya (爾雅), oldest extant Chinese dictionary
• Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字), first Chinese character dictionary
• Kangxi dictionary (康熙字典), Qing Dynasty imperial dictionary
• Rime dictionaries, listing characters by phonology
• Xinhua zidian (新华字典), world's best-selling dictionary

Croatian

• English-Croatian bi-directional on-line dictionary

Dutch

• Van Dale
• Prisma
• Online Nederlands Woordenboek
• Online Woordenboek Project

English

• OXID Dictionary - Online English Dictionary and Thesaurus
• Websters Dictionary
• Oxford English Dictionary (descriptive)
• Concise Oxford Dictionary
• New Oxford Dictionary of English
• New Oxford American Dictionary
• Canadian Oxford Dictionary
• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
• ITP Nelson Canadian Dictionary
• Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary
• Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (prescriptive)
• Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language (prescriptive)
• Webster's Third New International Dictionary (descriptive)
• The Century Dictionary
• Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
• Macquarie Dictionary, The, a dictionary of Australian English
• Chambers Dictionary
• Collins COBUILD
• Collins English Dictionary
• Gage Canadian Dictionary
• Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
• Black's Law Dictionary, a law dictionary
• Law Dictionary - includes legal terms from the Bouvier Law Dictionary.
• W3Dictionary - incorporates several popular and reliable dictionaries into one online source.
• Dean's Law Dictionary - created by artificial intelligence with over 185,000 terms and 300,000 case cites.
• Webster's New World Dictionary

Esperanto

• Plena Ilustrita Vortaro

French

• Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française (prescriptive)
• Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française ("Le Robert") (descriptive)
  • Petit Robert (abridgement)
• Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé (TLFi) http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm (free online comprehensive dictionary)
• Dictionnaire de la langue française (Littré)
• Lexis, Dictionnaire Larousse de la langue française
• Dictionnaire des synonymes http://elsap1.unicaen.fr/cgi-bin/cherches.cgi (University of Caen)
• Atlas Sémantique http://dico.isc.cnrs.fr/ (free online Fr-En/En-Fr dictionary, English thesaurus, French thesaurus by CNRS)
• Le dictionnaire http://www.le-dictionnaire.com
• Annuaire des dictionnaires français http://www.les-dictionnaires.com
• Lexilogos http://www.lexilogos.com/index.htm (Website on dictionaries in languages from all over the world)
• Grand dictionnaire terminologique http://www.granddictionnaire.com/btml/fra/r_motclef/index800_1.asp (free online technical dictionary by Office de la Langue Française Québec)
• Dictionnaire Termium http://www.termium.gc.ca/ (online technical dictionary by Public Works and government Services Canada)
• Le dictionnaire universel d'Antoine Furetière (17th century, 3 volumes, 4,000 pages)
• Carlier, Dictionnaire des citations françaises (7,000 quotations)
• Pierre Oster, Dictionnaire de citations françaises (15,000 quotations)
• Thésaurus - des mots aux idées, des idées aux mots (Publisher: Larousse)
• Niobey, Dictionnaire analogique (Publisher: Larousse)
• Montreynaud, Dictionnaire de proverbes et dictons (Publisher: Le Robert, sayings and maxims)

German

• Duden
• Der Große Muret Sanders by Langenscheidt
• Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~cd2/drw/
• Deutsches Wörterbuch by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm http://www.dwb.uni-trier.de/
• Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache http://www.dwds.de/?woerterbuch=1&qu=
• PONS Großwörterbuch Englisch

Hebrew

• The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew
• Even-Shoshan Dictionary

Hindi

• Digital Dictionary of South Asia
• शब्दकोश (Shabadkosh)

Italian

• Dizionario Battaglia
• De Mauro Italian definition
• FreeDict Italian«--»English
• Garzanti Linguistica Italian definition, Italian«--»English, Italian«--»French (free registration is required)
• Lexibase Online Italian«--»English, Italian«--»French
• Oxford Paravia Italian«--»English
• Programma Dizionario Over 90 free dictionaries from/to Italian by Dictionary Team
• Italian dictionaries Collection of free Italian dictionaries
• slovnik.cz Italian«--»Czech
• WordReference Italian«--»English
• EngagedThinking Online, Italian«--»English

Japanese

Main article: Japanese dictionaries

• Shin Meikai kokugo jiten (新明解国語辞典), a medium-sized Japanese-Japanese dictionary
• Kōjien (広辞苑), a large, often quoted Japanese-Japanese dictionary
• Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (日本国語大辞典), the largest Japanese-Japanese dictionary, in 14 volumes
• Shogakukan Progressive Japanese-English Dictionary (小学館 プログレッシブ和英中辞典), a medium-sized Japanese-English Dictionary
• Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary (新和英大辞典), the largest Japanese-English Dictionary
• Dai Kan-Wa jiten (大漢和辞典), a comprehensive kanji dictionary containing about 50,000 characters.

Kinyarwanda

• Iriza-Starter 2006: The 1st Kinyarwanda-English and English-Kinyarwanda Dictionary containing about 12,250 words entries in Kinyarwanda and 23,500 equivalents in English. The concerned dictionary is to be published soon, after being edited.

Malay

• Kamus Dewan

Maltese

• English-Maltese Online Dictionary First English to Maltese dictionary

Norwegian

• Norsk Ordbok

Polish

• Aleksander Brückner, Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego (Etymological Dictionary of the Polish Language).
• Kościuszko Foundation Dictionary, 2 vols. (English-Polish, Polish-English).
• Słownik wyrazów obcych PWN (PWN Dictionary of Foreign Expressions).
• Jan Stanisławski, Great English-Polish, Polish-English Dictionary.
• Michał Tasiemski, Polsko-angielski słownik tłumaczący LexiTools (Multimedialny słownik frazeologiczny).

Portuguese

• Novo Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (Dicionário Aurélio)
• Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa
• Michaelis
• Dicionário do Português Contemporâneo (Lisbon Academy of Sciences)
• Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (Porto Editora)
• Priberam

Romanian

• Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române [1]
• Online Romanian-English dictionary

Russian

• Vladimir Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language
• Sergei Ozhegov's Dictionary of the Russian Language (Slovar' Russkogo Yazyka)
• Dictionary of International Words (Slovar' Inostrannykh Slov)

Spanish

• Diccionario de la Real Academia Española [2]
• Diccionario de uso del español de María Moliner

Serbian

• English-Serbian bidirectional on-line dictionary

Swedish

• Svenska Akademiens Ordbok
• Svenska Akademiens Ordlista

Turkish

• Türkçe Sözlük (Online English to Turkish Dictionary)
• Türkçe Sözlük (Turkish Language Dictionary)
• Multilingual Dictionary (Turkish to DE, EN, ES, FR, IT, NL, PT, and more...)
• Idioms Dictionary (English and Turkish)

Urdu

Historical Urdu-Urdu Dictionaries

• Farhung-e-Asifia
• Ameer-ul-Lughat
• Quami Urdu Lughat
• Feroze-ul-Lughat

Online English-Urdu Dictionary

• Dictionaty at Urdu Seek
• Urdu online Dictionaries
• Urdu Word.com
• Platts Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English

Publishers

• Cambridge University Press
• Chambers Harrap
• Collins
• Funk and Wagnalls
• Merriam-Webster
• Oxford University Press
• Longman
• Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe

List of online dictionaries

• Babylon Online Translator
• The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
• The Compact Oxford English Dictionary
• Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
• Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary etc. (Cambridge Dictionaries Online)
• The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language Fourth Edition
• Leo - English-German (and vice-versa) dictionary; German-French (and vice-versa) dictionary; German-Spanisch (and vice-versa) dictionary
• Dict.cc simple arranged, and wide-ranged English-German (vice-versa) translation dictionary
• woerterbuch.info — Free English-German Online Dictionary with over 950.000 translations and synonyms

List of offline dictionaries

• LingoPad - Multilingual Dictionary for Windows (Freeware)

List of collaborative dictionaries

An open content dictionary project is the Collaborative International Dictionary of English, using Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) and WordNet as its sources. The GNU version of it, GCIDE, is being developed collaboratively under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Other collaborative dictionary projects:

• Papillon Multilingual Dictionary with a Pivot Structure [3] ("free of charge for non commercial use")
• EDICT Digital Japanese-English dictionary. [4]
• Everything2 Contains, among other things, an entire Webster 1913 dictionary
• freedict Bilingual dictionaries, released under the GPL
• PseudoDictionary New coinages and unusual words, mostly slang
• Reading Tutor - Digital multilingual dictionary: Japanese-Japanese, Japanese-English, Japanese-German, Japanese-Dutch
• Urban Dictionary Slang dictionary
• Wiktionary A sister project of the well-known collaborative encyclopedia Wikipædia

See also

• Thesaurus
• Rhyming dictionary
• Pronouncing dictionary
• Monolingual learners' dictionaries
• Encyclopedic dictionary
• Corpus linguistics
• COBUILD, a large corpus of English text
• DICT, the dictionary server protocol
• Lexicographic error
• Centre for Lexicography
• Lexigraf
• Electronic dictionary

References

• Manual of Specialised Lexicography, Henning Bergenholtz/Sven Tarp (eds.), Benjamins Publishing, 1995
• Diction and Stylistics of the 21st century, Darwin, Charles Schickelgruber Maxis (ed.), Jackson Publishing, 2001
• The Bilingual LSP Dictionary, Sandro Nielsen, Gunter Narr Verlag 1994
• Dictionaries, The Art and Craft of Lexicography, Sidney I. Landau, Simon & Schuster, 1998, hardcover, ISBN 0-684-18096-0
• The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester, HarperPerennial, New York, 1998, trade paperback, ISBN 0-06-017596-6. (published in the UK as The Surgeon of Crowthorne)