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A dictionary is a book of alphabetically listed words in a specific language, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and other information;^[1] or a book of alphabetically listed words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon.^[1]

In many languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the undeclined or unconjugated form appears as the headword in most dictionaries. Dictionaries are most commonly found in the form of a book, but some newer dictionaries, like StarDict, are dictionary software products running on PDAs or computers. There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.

A multi-volume Latin dictionary in the University Library of Graz.

History

The first dictionary of the Chinese language, the Shuowen Jiezi, was written around 100 CE. According to the The Chronicles of Japan, Japanese dictionaries originated in 682 CE, although the first dictionary dealt with the deciphering of Chinese characters. The first dictionary ever written was done by the Babylonians in 6th Century B.C.^{[citation needed]}

The earliest dictionaries were bilingual dictionaries. These were glossaries of French, Italian or Latin words, along with definitions of the foreign words in English. An early nonalphabetical list of 8000 English words was the Elementarie created by Richard Mulcaster in 1582.^[2][3]

The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written by English schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604.

However, alphabetical ordering continued to be rare until the 18th century. Before alphabetical listings, dictionaries were organized by topic, i.e. a list of animals all together in one topic.

Word order

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

In many languages, words are grouped together according to their root word, with the roots being arranged alphabetically. If English dictionaries were arranged like this, the words "import," "export," "support," "report," "porter," "important" and "transportation" would theoretically be listed under the Latin "portare," "to carry." This method has the advantage that all words of a common origin are listed together, but the disadvantage is that one has to know the roots of the word before one can look it up. Some Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Arabic dictionaries work this way.

While most of Japanese and Korean dictionaries are arranged according to their phonetic writing (kana syllabic script for the Japanese, and hangul alphabet for the Korean), the main body of modern Chinese dictionaries mostly is ordered according to the latin alphabet with the pinyin spelling ; but most Chinese dictionaries have an appendix ordering entries accordance to the Chinese logographic writing system , in order to allow readers to find words written in logograms whose pronunciation is not known. Chinese characters may be sorted according to one of many schemes based on the component parts of the characters (radicals, number of strokes, overall shape).

Coverage

Dictionaries can vary widely in coverage, size, and scope. A maximizing dictionary lists as many words as possible from a particular speech community (e.g., the Oxford English Dictionary), whereas a minimizing dictionary exclusively attempts to cover only a limited selection of words from a speech community (e.g., a dictionary of Basic English words). Take for instance, two dictionaries of Chinese characters: the pocket-sized minimizing dictionary Xinhua Zidian (2004, 700 pages) only includes 11,200 commonly used characters, while the multi-volume maximizing dictionary Hanyu Da Zidian (1995, 5800 pages) includes over 54,678 characters and variants.

Special-purpose dictionaries

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

A selection of special purpose dictionaries

Monolingual dictionaries

Monolingual dictionaries contain entries in one language and the data related to those entries are in the same language. These dictionaries can have a number of different, though interrelated functions. Monolingual dictionaries can assist users who produce texts, help users read and understand texts, and assist users who write texts.

Bilingual dictionaries

The Penguin English Dictionary

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Webster's Third New International Dictionary (descriptive)

Random House Dictionary of the English Language

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

Webster's New World Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary (descriptive)

Concise Oxford Dictionary

New Oxford Dictionary of English

New Oxford American Dictionary

Canadian Oxford Dictionary

Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary