An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. 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 New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) is a single-volume dictionary of American English compiled by American editors at the Oxford University Press.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around the world.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is one of the best-known of the 'smaller' Oxford dictionaries. The latest edition contains over 240,000 entries and 1,728 pages. Its 12th edition, published in 2011, is used by both the United Nations (UN) and NATO as the current authority for spellings in documents in English for international use. It is available as an e-book for a variety of handheld device platforms. In addition to providing information for general use, it documents local variations such as United States and United Kingdom usage.
The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It is considered by many to be the standard reference on Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is now published by Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd. In October 2007 it moved its editorial office from Macquarie University to the University of Sydney, and later to the Pan Macmillan offices in the Sydney central business district.
WordWeb is an international English dictionary and thesaurus program for Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, and Mac OS X. It is partly based on the WordNet database.
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) was the first advanced learner's dictionary of English. It was first published in 1948. It is the largest English-language dictionary from Oxford University Press aimed at a non-native audience. Users with a more linguistic interest, requiring etymologies or copious references, usually prefer the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, or indeed the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, or other dictionaries aimed at speakers of English with native-level competence.
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.
Kōjien is a single-volume Japanese dictionary first published by Iwanami Shoten in 1955. It is widely regarded as the most authoritative dictionary of Japanese, and newspaper editorials frequently cite its definitions. As of 2007, it had sold 11 million copies.
First published in 1918, Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary has long been the largest and most authoritative Japanese-English dictionary. Translators, scholars, and specialists who use the Japanese language affectionately refer to this dictionary as the Green Goddess or GG because of its distinctive dark-green cover.
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.
The Hanyu Da Cidian, also known as the Grand Chinese Dictionary, is the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary. Lexicographically comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, it has diachronic coverage of the Chinese language, and traces usage over three millennia from Chinese classic texts to modern slang. The chief editor Luo Zhufeng (1911–1996), along with a team of over 300 scholars and lexicographers, started the enormous task of compilation in 1979. Publication of the thirteen volumes began with first volume in 1986 and ended with the appendix and index volume in 1994. In 1994, the dictionary also won the National Book Award of China.
The English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) is the most comprehensive dictionary of English dialects ever published, compiled by the Yorkshire dialectologist Joseph Wright (1855–1930), with strong support by a team and his wife Elizabeth Mary Wright (1863–1958). The time of dialect use covered is, by and large, the Late Modern English period (1700–1903), but given Wright's historical interest, many entries contain information on etymological precursors of dialect words in centuries as far back as Old English and Middle English. Wright had hundreds of informants ("correspondents") and borrowed from thousands of written sources, mainly glossaries published by the English Dialect Society in the later 19th century, but also many literary texts written in dialect. In contrast to most of his sources, Wright pursued a scholarly linguistic method, providing full evidence of his sources and antedating modes of grammatical analysis of the 20th century. The contents of the EDD's nearly 80.000 entries were generally ignored during the 20th century but were made accessible by the interface of EDD Online, the achievement of an Innsbruck University research project first published in 2012 and repeatedly revised since.
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE), first published by Longman in 1978, is an advanced learner's dictionary, providing definitions using a restricted vocabulary, helping non-native English speakers understand meanings easily. It is available in four configurations:
The Daijisen is a general-purpose Japanese dictionary published by Shogakukan in 1995 and 1998. It was designed as an "all-in-one" dictionary for native speakers of Japanese, especially high school and university students.
The Collins Robert French Dictionary is a bilingual dictionary of English and French derived from the Collins Word Web, an analytical linguistics database. As well as its primary function as a bilingual dictionary, it also contains usage guides for English and French, English and French verb tables, and maps of English and French speaking areas.
Google Dictionary is an online dictionary service of Google that can be accessed with the "define" operator and other similar phrases in Google Search. It is also available in Google Translate and as a Google Chrome extension. The dictionary content is licensed from Oxford University Press's Oxford Languages. It is available in different languages, such as English, Spanish and French. The service also contains pronunciation audio, Google Translate, a word origin chart, Ngram Viewer, and word games, among other features for the English-language version. Originally available as a standalone service, it was integrated into Google Search, with the separate service discontinued in August 2011.
The Australian Oxford Dictionary, sometimes abbreviated as AOD, is a dictionary of Australian English published by Oxford University Press.
