Dictionary

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Langenscheidt dictionaries in various languages Woerterbuchstapel Langenscheidt.jpg
Langenscheidt dictionaries in various languages
A multi-volume Latin dictionary by Egidio Forcellini Latin dictionary.jpg
A multi-volume Latin dictionary by Egidio Forcellini
Dictionary definition entries Compact OED ahoy2 (cropped).png
Dictionary definition entries

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical and stroke for logographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. [1] [2] [3] It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data. [4]

Contents

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a comprehensive range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study.[ citation needed ] In theory, general dictionaries are supposed[ citation needed ] to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types. [5] There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms (thesauri), and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary. [6]

There is also a contrast between prescriptive or descriptive dictionaries; the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications (e.g. "informal" or "vulgar") in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive. [7]

The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times around 2300 BCE, in the form of bilingual dictionaries, and the oldest surviving monolingual dictionaries are Chinese dictionaries c.3rd century BCE. The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall , written in 1604, and monolingual dictionaries in other languages also began appearing in Europe at around this time. The systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest arose as a 20th-century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta. [6] The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, with the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of having an "astonishing" lack of method and critical-self reflection. [8]

History

Catalan-Latin dictionary from the year 1696 with more than 1000 pages. Gazophylacium Dictionary. Catalano latinum 1696 Gazophylacium Dictionary published in Barcelona.jpg
Catalan-Latin dictionary from the year 1696 with more than 1000 pages. Gazophylacium Dictionary.

The oldest known dictionaries were cuneiform tablets with bilingual SumerianAkkadian wordlists, discovered in Ebla (modern Syria) and dated to roughly 2300 BCE, the time of the Akkadian Empire. [9] [10] [11] The early 2nd millennium BCE Urra=hubullu glossary is the canonical Babylonian version of such bilingual Sumerian wordlists. A Chinese dictionary, the c.3rd century BCE Erya , is the earliest surviving monolingual dictionary; and some sources cite the Shizhoupian (probably compiled sometime between 700 BCE to 200 BCE, possibly earlier) as a "dictionary", although modern scholarship considers it a calligraphic compendium of Chinese characters from Zhou dynasty bronzes.[ citation needed ] Philitas of Cos (fl. 4th century BCE) wrote a pioneering vocabulary Disorderly Words (Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι, Átaktoi glôssai) which explained the meanings of rare Homeric and other literary words, words from local dialects, and technical terms. [12] Apollonius the Sophist (fl. 1st century CE) wrote the oldest surviving Homeric lexicon. [10] The first Sanskrit dictionary, the Amarakośa, was written by Amarasimha c.4th century CE. Written in verse, it listed around 10,000 words. According to the Nihon Shoki , the first Japanese dictionary was the long-lost 682 CE Niina glossary of Chinese characters. Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi's 8th century Kitab al-'Ayn is considered the first dictionary of Arabic. [13] The oldest existing Japanese dictionary, the c.835 CE Tenrei Banshō Meigi , was also a glossary of written Chinese. In Frahang-i Pahlavig , Aramaic heterograms are listed together with their translation in the Middle Persian language and phonetic transcription in the Pazend alphabet. A 9th-century CE Irish dictionary, Sanas Cormaic, contained etymologies and explanations of over 1,400 Irish words. In the 12th century, The Karakhanid-Turkic scholar Mahmud Kashgari finished his work "Divan-u Lügat'it Türk", a dictionary about the Turkic dialects, but especially Karakhanid Turkic. His work contains about 7500 to 8000 words and it was written to teach non Turkic Muslims, especially the Abbasid Arabs, the Turkic language. [14] Al-Zamakhshari wrote a small Arabic dictionary called "Muḳaddimetü'l-edeb" for the Turkic-Khwarazm ruler Atsiz. [15] In the 14th century, the Codex Cumanicus was finished and it served as a dictionary about the Cuman-Turkic language. While in Mamluk Egypt, Ebû Hayyân el-Endelüsî finished his work "Kitâbü'l-İdrâk li-lisâni'l-Etrâk", a dictionary about the Kipchak and Turcoman languages spoken in Egypt and the Levant. [16] A dictionary called "Bahşayiş Lügati", which is written in old Anatolian Turkish, served also as a dictionary between Oghuz Turkish, Arabic and Persian. But it is not clear who wrote the dictionary or in which century exactly it was published. It was written in old Anatolian Turkish from the Seljuk period and not the late medieval Ottoman period. [17] In India around 1320, Amir Khusro compiled the Khaliq-e-bari, which mainly dealt with Hindustani and Persian words. [18]

The French-language Petit Larousse is an example of an illustrated dictionary. Nouveau Dictionnaire Larousse page.JPG
The French-language Petit Larousse is an example of an illustrated dictionary.

Arabic dictionaries were compiled between the 8th and 14th centuries, organizing words in rhyme order (by the last syllable), by alphabetical order of the radicals, or according to the alphabetical order of the first letter (the system used in modern European language dictionaries). The modern system was mainly used in specialist dictionaries, such as those of terms from the Qur'an and hadith, while most general use dictionaries, such as the Lisan al-`Arab (13th century, still the best-known large-scale dictionary of Arabic) and al-Qamus al-Muhit (14th century) listed words in the alphabetical order of the radicals. The Qamus al-Muhit is the first handy dictionary in Arabic, which includes only words and their definitions, eliminating the supporting examples used in such dictionaries as the Lisan and the Oxford English Dictionary . [19]

1612 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca Vocabolario degli accademici della crusca, prima edizione per giovanni alberti, venezia 1612, 01.jpg
1612 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca

In medieval Europe, glossaries with equivalents for Latin words in vernacular or simpler Latin were in use (e.g. the Leiden Glossary). The Catholicon (1287) by Johannes Balbus, a large grammatical work with an alphabetical lexicon, was widely adopted. It served as the basis for several bilingual dictionaries and was one of the earliest books (in 1460) to be printed. In 1502 Ambrogio Calepino's Dictionarium was published, originally a monolingual Latin dictionary, which over the course of the 16th century was enlarged to become a multilingual glossary. In 1532 Robert Estienne published the Thesaurus linguae latinae and in 1572 his son Henri Estienne published the Thesaurus linguae graecae , which served up to the 19th century as the basis of Greek lexicography. The first monolingual Spanish dictionary written was Sebastián Covarrubias's Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española , published in 1611 in Madrid, Spain. [20] In 1612 the first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca , for Italian, was published. It served as the model for similar works in French and English. In 1690 in Rotterdam was published, posthumously, the Dictionnaire Universel by Antoine Furetière for French. In 1694 appeared the first edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (still published, with the ninth edition not complete as of 2021). Between 1712 and 1721 was published the Vocabulario portughez e latino written by Raphael Bluteau. The Royal Spanish Academy published the first edition of the Diccionario de la lengua española (still published, with a new edition about every decade) in 1780; their Diccionario de Autoridades, which included quotes taken from literary works, was published in 1726. The Totius Latinitatis lexicon by Egidio Forcellini was firstly published in 1777; it has formed the basis of all similar works that have since been published.

The first edition of A Greek-English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott appeared in 1843; this work remained the basic dictionary of Greek until the end of the 20th century. And in 1858 was published the first volume of the Deutsches Wörterbuch by the Brothers Grimm; the work was completed in 1961. Between 1861 and 1874 was published the Dizionario della lingua italiana by Niccolò Tommaseo. Between 1862 and 1874 was published the six volumes of A magyar nyelv szótára (Dictionary of Hungarian Language) by Gergely Czuczor and János Fogarasi. Émile Littré published the Dictionnaire de la langue française between 1863 and 1872. In the same year 1863 appeared the first volume of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal which was completed in 1998. Also in 1863 Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl published the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language . The Duden dictionary dates back to 1880, and is currently the prescriptive source for the spelling of German. The decision to start work on the Svenska Akademiens ordbok was taken in 1787. [21]

English dictionaries in Britain

The earliest dictionaries in the English language were glossaries of French, Spanish or Latin words along with their definitions in English. The word "dictionary" was invented by an Englishman called John of Garland in 1220  he had written a book Dictionarius to help with Latin "diction". [22] An early non-alphabetical list of 8000 English words was the Elementarie, created by Richard Mulcaster in 1582. [23] [24]

The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall , written by English schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604. [2] [3] The only surviving copy is found at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This dictionary, and the many imitators which followed it, was seen as unreliable and nowhere near definitive. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield was still lamenting in 1754, 150 years after Cawdrey's publication, that it is "a sort of disgrace to our nation, that hitherto we have had no… standard of our language; our dictionaries at present being more properly what our neighbors the Dutch and the Germans call theirs, word-books, than dictionaries in the superior sense of that title." [25]

In 1616, John Bullokar described the history of the dictionary with his "English Expositor". Glossographia by Thomas Blount, published in 1656, contains more than 10,000 words along with their etymologies or histories. Edward Phillips wrote another dictionary in 1658, entitled "The New World of English Words: Or a General Dictionary" which boldly plagiarized Blount's work, and the two criticised each other. This created more interest in the dictionaries. John Wilkins' 1668 essay on philosophical language contains a list of 11,500 words with careful distinctions, compiled by William Lloyd. [26] Elisha Coles published his "English Dictionary" in 1676.

It was not until Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) that a more reliable English dictionary was produced. [3] Many people today mistakenly believe that Johnson wrote the first English dictionary: a testimony to this legacy. [2] [27] By this stage, dictionaries had evolved to contain textual references for most words, and were arranged alphabetically, rather than by topic (a previously popular form of arrangement, which meant all animals would be grouped together, etc.). Johnson's masterwork could be judged as the first to bring all these elements together, creating the first "modern" dictionary. [27]

Johnson's dictionary remained the English-language standard for over 150 years, until the Oxford University Press began writing and releasing the Oxford English Dictionary in short fascicles from 1884 onwards. [3] A complete ten-volume first edition [28] was not released until 1928. [29] One of the main contributors to this modern dictionary was an ex-army surgeon, William Chester Minor, a convicted murderer who was confined to an asylum for the criminally insane. [30]

The OED remains the most comprehensive and trusted English language dictionary to this day, with revisions and updates added by a dedicated team every three months.

American English dictionaries

In 1806, American Noah Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language . [3] In 1807 Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-seven years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit.

Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France, and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced spellings that became American English, replacing "colour" with "color", substituting "wagon" for "waggon", and printing "center" instead of "centre". He also added American words, like "skunk" and "squash", which did not appear in British dictionaries. At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828; it sold 2500 copies. In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes. Webster's dictionary was acquired by G & C Merriam Co. in 1843, after his death, and has since been published in many revised editions. Merriam-Webster was acquired by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1964.

Controversy over the lack of usage advice in the 1961 Webster's Third New International Dictionary spurred publication of the 1969 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language , the first dictionary to use corpus linguistics.

Types

In a general dictionary, each word may have multiple meanings. Some dictionaries include each separate meaning in the order of most common usage while others list definitions in historical order, with the oldest usage first. [31]

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 and the New Oxford American Dictionary are dictionary software running on PDAs or computers. There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.

Specialized dictionaries

According to the Manual of Specialized Lexicographies, a specialized dictionary, also referred to as a technical dictionary, is a dictionary that focuses upon a specific subject field, as opposed to a dictionary that comprehensively contains words from the lexicon of a specific language or languages. Following the description in The Bilingual LSP Dictionary, lexicographers categorize specialized dictionaries into three types: A multi-field dictionary broadly covers several subject fields (e.g. a business dictionary), a single-field dictionary narrowly covers one particular subject field (e.g. law), and a sub-field dictionary covers a more specialized field (e.g. constitutional law). For example, the 23-language Inter-Active Terminology for Europe is a multi-field dictionary, the American National Biography is a single-field, and the African American National Biography Project is a sub-field dictionary. In terms of the coverage distinction between "minimizing dictionaries" and "maximizing dictionaries", multi-field dictionaries tend to minimize coverage across subject fields (for instance, Oxford Dictionary of World Religions and Yadgar Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms ) [32] whereas single-field and sub-field dictionaries tend to maximize coverage within a limited subject field ( The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology ).

Another variant is the glossary, an alphabetical list of defined terms in a specialized field, such as medicine (medical dictionary).

Defining dictionaries

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.

Prescriptive vs. descriptive

Lexicographers apply two basic philosophies to the defining of words: prescriptive or descriptive. Noah Webster, intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language, altered spellings and accentuated differences in meaning and pronunciation of some words. This is why American English now uses the spelling color while the rest of the English-speaking world prefers colour. (Similarly, British English subsequently underwent a few spelling changes that did not affect American English; see further at American and British English spelling differences.) [33]

Large 20th-century dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Webster's Third are descriptive, and attempt to describe the actual use of words. Most dictionaries of English now apply the descriptive method to a word's definition, and then, outside of the definition itself, provide information alerting readers to attitudes which may influence their choices on words often considered vulgar, offensive, erroneous, or easily confused. [34] Merriam-Webster is subtle, only adding italicized notations such as, sometimes offensive or stand (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 widespread use of dictionaries in schools, and their acceptance by many as language authorities, their treatment of the language does affect usage to some degree, with even the most descriptive dictionaries providing conservative continuity. In the long run, however, the meanings of words in English are primarily determined by usage, and the language is being changed and created every day. [35] 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."

Sometimes the same dictionary can be descriptive in some domains and prescriptive in others. For example, according to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, the Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary is "at war with itself": whereas its coverage (lexical items) and glosses (definitions) are descriptive and colloquial, its vocalization is prescriptive. This internal conflict results in absurd sentences such as hi taharóg otí kshetiré me asíti lamkhonít (she'll tear me apart when she sees what I've done to the car). Whereas hi taharóg otí, literally 'she will kill me', is colloquial, me (a variant of ma 'what') is archaic, resulting in a combination that is unutterable in real life. [36]

Historical dictionaries

A historical dictionary is a specific kind of descriptive dictionary which describes the development of words and senses over time, usually using citations to original source material to support its conclusions. [37]

Dictionaries for natural language processing

In contrast to traditional dictionaries, which are designed to be used by human beings, dictionaries for natural language processing (NLP) are built to be used by computer programs. The final user is a human being but the direct user is a program. Such a dictionary does not need to be able to be printed on paper. The structure of the content is not linear, ordered entry by entry but has the form of a complex network (see Diathesis alternation). Because most of these dictionaries are used to control machine translations or cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) the content is usually multilingual and usually of huge size. In order to allow formalized exchange and merging of dictionaries, an ISO standard called Lexical Markup Framework (LMF) has been defined and used among the industrial and academic community. [38]

Other types

Pronunciation

In many languages, such as the English language, the pronunciation of some words is not consistently apparent from their spelling. In these languages, dictionaries usually provide the pronunciation. For example, the definition for the word dictionary might be followed by the International Phonetic Alphabet spelling /ˈdɪkʃənəri/ (in British English) or /ˈdɪkʃənɛri/ (in American English). American English dictionaries often use their own pronunciation respelling systems with diacritics, for example dictionary is respelled as "dĭkshə-nĕr′ē" in the American Heritage Dictionary. [39] The IPA is more commonly used within the British Commonwealth countries. Yet others use their own pronunciation respelling systems without diacritics: for example, dictionary may be respelled as DIK-shə-nerr-ee. Some online or electronic dictionaries provide audio recordings of words being spoken.

Examples

Major English dictionaries

Dictionaries of other languages

Histories and descriptions of the dictionaries of other languages on Wikipedia include:

Online dictionaries

The age of the Internet brought online dictionaries to the desktop and, more recently, to the smart phone. David Skinner in 2013 noted that "Among the top ten lookups on Merriam-Webster Online at this moment are holistic, pragmatic, caveat, esoteric and bourgeois. Teaching users about words they don't already know has been, historically, an aim of lexicography, and modern dictionaries do this well." [40]

There exist a number of websites which operate as online dictionaries, usually with a specialized focus. Some of them have exclusively user driven content, often consisting of neologisms. Some of the more notable examples are given in List of online dictionaries and Category:Online dictionaries.

See also

Notes

  1. Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 2002
  2. 1 2 3 Nordquist, Richard (August 9, 2019). "The Features, Functions, and Limitations of Dictionaries". ThoughtCo. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved November 13, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Dictionary". Britannica. Archived from the original on July 8, 2022. Retrieved November 13, 2022.
  4. Nielsen, Sandro (2008). "The Effect of Lexicographical Information Costs on Dictionary Naming and Use". Lexikos. 18: 170–189. ISSN   1684-4904.
  5. A Practical Guide to Lexicography, Sterkenburg 2003, pp. 155–157
  6. 1 2 A Practical Guide to Lexicography, Sterkenburg 2003, pp. 3–4
  7. A Practical Guide to Lexicography, Sterkenburg 2003, p. 7
  8. R. R. K. Hartmann (2003). Lexicography: Dictionaries, compilers, critics, and users. Routledge. p. 21. ISBN   978-0-415-25366-6.
  9. "DCCLT – Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts". oracc.museum.upenn.edu. Archived from the original on 2022-04-01. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
  10. 1 2 Dictionary – MSN Encarta. Archived from the original on 2009-10-29.
  11. Jackson, Howard (2022-02-24). The Bloomsbury Handbook of Lexicography. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   978-1-350-18172-4.
  12. Peter Bing (2003). "The unruly tongue: Philitas of Cos as scholar and poet". Classical Philology. 98 (4): 330–348. doi:10.1086/422370. S2CID   162304317.
  13. Sellheim, R., "al-K̲h̲alīl b. Aḥmad", in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 04 June 2023
  14. Besim Atalay, Divanü Lügat-it Türk Dizini, TTK Basımevi, Ankara, 1986
  15. Zeki Velidi Togan, Zimahşeri'nin Doğu Türkçesi İle Mukaddimetül Edeb'i
  16. Ahmet Caferoğlu, Kitab Al Idrak Li Lisan Al Atrak, 1931
  17. Bahşāyiş Bin Çalıça, Bahşayiş Lügati: Hazırlayan: Fikret TURAN, Ankara 2017,
  18. Rashid, Omar. "Chasing Khusro". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 25 September 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
  19. "Ḳāmūs", J. Eckmann, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Brill
  20. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, edición integral e ilustrada de Ignacio Arellano y Rafael Zafra, Madrid, Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2006, pg. XLIX.
  21. "OSA – Om svar anhålles". g3.spraakdata.gu.se. Archived from the original on 2 March 2013. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  22. Mark Forsyth. The etymologicon. // Icon Books Ltd. London N79DP, 2011. p. 128
  23. "1582 – Mulcaster's Elementarie". www.bl.uk. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  24. A Brief History of English Lexicography Archived 2008-03-09 at the Wayback Machine , Peter Erdmann and See-Young Cho, Technische Universität Berlin, 1999.
  25. Jack Lynch, "How Johnson's Dictionary Became the First Dictionary" (delivered 25 August 2005 at the Johnson and the English Language conference, Birmingham) Archived 29 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 12, 2008,
  26. John P. Considine (27 March 2008). Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of Heritage. Cambridge University Press. p. 298. ISBN   978-0-521-88674-1 . Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  27. 1 2 "Lynch, "How Johnson's Dictionary Became the First Dictionary"". andromeda.rutgers.edu. Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  28. "The Oxford English Dictionary (OED)". Encyclopedia Britannica. 1998-07-20. Retrieved 2024-09-14.
  29. Dirda, Michael (2023-10-12). "The most influential crowdsourcing project happened long before Wikipedia". Washington Post. Retrieved 2024-09-14.
  30. Simon Winchester, The Surgeon of Crowthorne .
  31. "Language Core Reference Sources – Texas State Library". Archived from the original on 2010-04-25. Retrieved 2010-08-22.
  32. Times, The Sindh (24 February 2015). "The first English to Einglish and Sindhi Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms published – The Sindh Times". Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  33. Phil Benson (2002). Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary. Taylor & Francis. pp. 8–11. ISBN   9780203205716.
  34. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade; Wim van der Wurff (2009). Current Issues in Late Modern English. Peter Lang. pp. 41–42. ISBN   9783039116607.
  35. Ned Halley, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Modern English Grammar (2005), p. 84
  36. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (1999). Review of the Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary Archived 2016-10-11 at the Wayback Machine , International Journal of Lexicography 12.4, pp. 325-346.
  37. See for example Toyin Falola, et al. Historical dictionary of Nigeria (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) excerpt Archived 2022-04-01 at the Wayback Machine
  38. Imad Zeroual, and Abdelhak Lakhouaja, "Data science in light of natural language processing: An overview." Procedia Computer Science 127 (2018): 82-91 online Archived 2022-02-22 at the Wayback Machine .
  39. "dictionary". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins.
  40. Skinner, David (May 17, 2013). "The Role of a Dictionary". Opinionator. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2013-05-18. Retrieved 2020-08-13.

Related Research Articles

Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries.. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines:

A thesaurus, sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings, sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:

...to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed

<i>A Dictionary of the English Language</i> 1755 dictionary by Samuel Johnson

A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, was published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson. It is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.

Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), an American lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.

A defining vocabulary is a list of words used by lexicographers to write dictionary definitions. The underlying principle goes back to Samuel Johnson's notion that words should be defined using 'terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained', and a defining vocabulary provides the lexicographer with a restricted list of high-frequency words which can be used for producing simple definitions of any word in the dictionary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Idiom dictionary</span> Dictionary or phrase book that lists and explains idioms

An idiom dictionary is a dictionary or phrase book that lists and explains idioms – distinctive words or phrases having a figurative meaning that goes beyond the original semantics of the words.

A monolingual learner's dictionary (MLD) is designed to meet the reference needs of people learning a foreign language. MLDs are based on the premise that language-learners should progress from a bilingual dictionary to a monolingual one as they become more proficient in their target language, but that general-purpose dictionaries are inappropriate for their needs. Dictionaries for learners include information on grammar, usage, common errors, collocation, and pragmatics, which is largely missing from standard dictionaries, because native speakers tend to know these aspects of language intuitively. And while the definitions in standard dictionaries are often written in difficult language, those in an MLD use a simple and accessible defining vocabulary.

Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken form of language, particularly when perceived as having lower social status or less prestige in contrast to standard language, which is more codified, institutionally promoted, literary, or formal. More narrowly, a particular language variety that does not hold a widespread high-status perception, and sometimes even carries social stigma, is also called a vernacular, vernacular dialect, nonstandard dialect, etc. and is typically its speakers' native variety. Regardless of any such stigma, modern linguistics regards all nonstandard dialects as full-fledged varieties of language with their own consistent grammatical structure, sound system, body of vocabulary, etc.

Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; the latter meaning is also known as terminology science. A term is a word, compound word, or multi-word expression that in specific contexts is given specific meanings—these may deviate from the meanings the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. Terminology is a discipline that studies, among other things, the development of such terms and their interrelationships within a specialized domain. Terminology differs from lexicography, as it involves the study of concepts, conceptual systems and their labels (terms), whereas lexicography studies words and their meanings.

Legal lexicography is the complex of activities concerned with the development of theories and principles for the design, compilation, use, and evaluation of dictionaries within the field of law, see e.g. Nielsen 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Law dictionary</span> Dictionary compiled to define legal terms

A law dictionary is a dictionary that is designed and compiled to give information about terms used in the field of law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic dictionary</span> Dictionary with data in digital form

An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media. Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including software installed on tablet or desktop computers, mobile apps, web applications, and as a built-in function of E-readers. They may be free or require payment.

Japanese dictionaries have a history that began over 1300 years ago when Japanese Buddhist priests, who wanted to understand Chinese sutras, adapted Chinese character dictionaries. Present-day Japanese lexicographers are exploring computerized editing and electronic dictionaries. According to Nakao Keisuke (中尾啓介):

It has often been said that dictionary publishing in Japan is active and prosperous, that Japanese people are well provided for with reference tools, and that lexicography here, in practice as well as in research, has produced a number of valuable reference books together with voluminous academic studies. (1998:35)


Irregardless is a word sometimes used in place of regardless or irrespective, which has caused controversy since the early twentieth century, though the word appeared in print as early as 1795. The word is mostly known for being controversial and often proscribed, and is often mentioned in discussions on prescriptive and descriptive lexicography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bilingual dictionary</span> Specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another

A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing translation to and from both languages. Bidirectional bilingual dictionaries usually consist of two sections, each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along with their translation. In addition to the translation, a bilingual dictionary usually indicates the part of speech, gender, verb type, declension model and other grammatical clues to help a non-native speaker use the word. Other features sometimes present in bilingual dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. In contrast to the bilingual dictionary, a monolingual dictionary defines words and phrases instead of translating them.

A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which do not have a phonemic orthography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advanced learner's dictionary</span> Type of monolingual learners dictionary

The advanced learner's dictionary is the most common type of monolingual learner's dictionary, that is, a dictionary written in one language only, for someone who is learning a foreign language. It differs from a bilingual or translation dictionary, a standard dictionary written for native speakers, or a children's dictionary. Its definitions are usually built on a restricted defining vocabulary. "Advanced" usually refers learners with a proficiency level of B2 or above according to the Common European Framework. Basic learner's dictionaries also exist.

Beryl T. "Sue" Atkins was a British lexicographer, specialising in computational lexicography, who pioneered the creation of bilingual dictionaries from corpus data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chinese dictionary</span>

There are two types of dictionaries regularly used in the Chinese language: 'character dictionaries' list individual Chinese characters, and 'word dictionaries' list words and phrases. Because tens of thousands of characters have been used in written Chinese, Chinese lexicographers have developed a number of methods to order and sort characters to facilitate more convenient reference.

<i>Garners Modern English Usage</i> Usage dictionary and style guide by American writer Bryan A. Garner

Garner's Modern English Usage (GMEU), written by Bryan A. Garner and published by Oxford University Press, is a usage dictionary and style guide for contemporary Modern English. It was first published in 1998 as A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, with a focus on American English, which it retained for the next two editions as Garner's Modern American Usage (GMAU). It was expanded to cover English more broadly in the 2016 fourth edition, under the present title. The work covers issues of usage, pronunciation, and style, from distinctions among commonly confused words and phrases to notes on how to prevent verbosity and obscurity. In addition, it contains essays about the English language. An abridged version of the first edition was also published as The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style in 2000 and a similar version was published in The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition in 2017. The latter includes three sections titled "Grammar", "Syntax" and "Word Usage", each with several subcategories.

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