History
The dictionary was initiated on 17 November 1927 by the decision of Eduskunta because, reportedly, there had been problems with word ambiguity and clarity in law-making. The initial roadmap was drafted in 1927 and 1928 and the Finnish Literature Society was given a grant for the development of the book. The first editor-in-chief was professor Martti Airila, who was followed in 1939 by professor Matti Sadeniemi.
The Second World War almost completely stalled the editorial work. In 1945 the dictionary had reached the letter L. The first volume was published in 1951, followed by five more volumes. The last volume was printed in 1961. An abbreviated "people's edition" was published in 1967, consisting of three volumes.
The original version remains unchanged—the dictionary only reflects the language as it was no later than 1961. There have been numerous reprintings: 15th edition was published in 2002.
Because the dictionary only reflects relatively dated language, and because the colloquial language in particular has greatly changed, it has been partly replaced by KOTUS's dictionaries during the 1990s, especially in regards to today's modern language. They include: The Basic Dictionary of the Finnish Language (Suomen kielen perussanakirja), published between 1990 and 1994, and its revised version The New Dictionary of Modern Finnish (Kielitoimiston sanakirja), published in 2006. However, Nykysuomen sanakirja remains the most comprehensive Finnish language dictionary as it contains over 201,000 headwords, far more comprehensive than the under 100,000 headwords of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland dictionaries.
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc.. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.
An encyclopedia, encyclopædia, or encyclopaedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either from all branches or from a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are often arranged alphabetically by article name and sometimes by thematic categories. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, use, and grammatical forms.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.
Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.
A Greek–English Lexicon, often referred to as Liddell & Scott or Liddell–Scott–Jones (LSJ), is a standard lexicographical work of the Ancient Greek language originally edited by Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, and Roderick McKenzie and published in 1843 by the Oxford University Press.
The Deutsches Wörterbuch, abbreviated DWB, is the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of the German language in existence. Encompassing modern High German vocabulary in use since 1450, it also includes loanwords adopted from other languages into German. Entries cover the etymology, meanings, attested forms, synonyms, usage peculiarities, and regional differences of words found throughout the German speaking world. The dictionary's historical linguistics approach, illuminated by examples from primary source documents, makes it to German what the Oxford English Dictionary is to English. The first completed DWB lists over 330,000 headwords in 67,000 print columns spanning 32 volumes.
A headword, lemma, or catchword is the word under which a set of related dictionary or encyclopaedia entries appears. The headword is used to locate the entry, and dictates its alphabetical position. Depending on the size and nature of the dictionary or encyclopedia, the entry may include alternative meanings of the word, its etymology, pronunciation and inflections, compound words or phrases that contain the headword, and encyclopedic information about the concepts represented by the word.
The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) is a record of American English as spoken in the United States, from its beginnings to the present. It differs from other dictionaries in that it does not document the standard language used throughout the country. Instead, it contains regional and folk speech, those words, phrases, and pronunciations that vary from one part of the country to another, or that we learn from our families and friends rather than from our teachers and books. For DARE, a "region" may be as small as a city or part of a city, or as large as most of the country. Humanities magazine has described it as "a bold synthesis of linguistic atlas and historical dictionary", and William Safire called it "the most exciting new linguistic project in the twentieth century".
Helsinki slang or stadin slangi is a local dialect and a sociolect of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital city of Helsinki. It is characterized by its abundance of foreign loan words not found in the other Finnish dialects.
The Nihon kokugo daijiten (日本国語大辞典), often abbreviated as the Nikkoku (日国) and sometimes known in English as Shogakukan's Japanese Dictionary, is the largest Japanese language dictionary published. In the period from 1972 to 1976, Shogakukan published the 20-volume first edition. The 14-volume second edition was published in the period from November 2000 to December 2001. It includes substantial additions to and improvements over the first edition.
The Dehkhoda Dictionary is the largest comprehensive Persian encyclopedic dictionary ever published, comprising 200 volumes. It is published by the Tehran University Press (UTP) under the supervision of the Dehkhoda Dictionary Institute. It was first published in 1931. It traces the historical development of the Persian language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.
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)
Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged was published in September 1961. It was edited by Philip Babcock Gove and a team of lexicographers who spent 757 editor-years and $3.5 million. The most recent printing has 2,816 pages, and as of 2005, it contained more than 476,000 vocabulary entries, 500,000 definitions, 140,000 etymologies, 200,000 verbal illustrations, 350,000 example sentences, 3,000 pictorial illustrations and an 18,000-word Addenda section.
A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which does not have a phonemic orthography.
The Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian is a comprehensive thesaurus of the Lithuanian language and one of the most extensive lexicographical works in the world. The 20 volumes encompassing 22,000 pages were published between 1941 and 2002 by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. An online and a CD version was made available in 2005. It contains about 236,000 headwords, or 500,000 if counting sub-headwords, reflecting modern and historical language both from published texts since the first published book in 1547 until 2001 and recorded from the vernacular. Definitions, usage notes, and examples are given for most words. The entry length varies from one sentence to almost a hundred pages. For example, 46 pages are devoted to 298 different meanings of taisyti and its derivatives.
Daijirin is a comprehensive single-volume Japanese dictionary edited by Akira Matsumura, and first published by Sanseido Books in 1988. This title is based upon two early Sanseidō dictionaries edited by Shōzaburō Kanazawa, Jirin and the revised Kōjirin.
Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian county Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent.
Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish is the most recent dictionary of the modern Finnish language. It is edited by the Institute for the Languages of Finland. The current printed edition was first published in 2006 and is based on the 2004 digital version of the same name. The printed version lacks some features of the electronic version, such as the latter's index of Finnish place names (asuinpaikkahakemisto).
Lexicography evolved in order to serve one of two needs i.e. in order to explain in a simple way difficult words and expressions or in order to explain the words and expressions of one language in another. In this case we can trace the tradition of lexicography in Irish back to the 8th century.
The English Pronouncing Dictionary (EPD) was created by the British phonetician Daniel Jones and was first published in 1917. It originally comprised over 50,000 headwords listed in their spelling form, each of which was given one or more pronunciations transcribed using a set of phonemic symbols based on a standard accent. The dictionary is now in its 18th edition. John C. Wells has written of it "EPD has set the standard against which other dictionaries must inevitably be judged".
