View source for Dictionary

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc.<ref>[http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/dcclt/intro/lexical_intro.html DCCLT - Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts]</ref> It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data. A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language.

==Classification==
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. In many languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the underlined 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.<ref>[https://books.google.com.bd/books?id=v7lgEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT347&redir_esc=y The Bloomsbury Handbook of Lexicography - Google Books]</ref> There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.

==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.<ref>[https://books.google.com.bd/books?id=hLlhyvpg7KoC&pg=PA21&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false Lexicography: Dictionaries, compilers, critics, and users - Google Books]</ref> 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.<ref>[https://blog.langavia.com/ blog.langavia.com - Blog Langavia - Personal dictionary to study languages]</ref>

==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:<ref>[https://books.google.com.bd/books?id=WeuW7oy7-58C&pg=PA8&redir_esc=y Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary - Phil Benson - Google Books]</ref> A multi-field dictionary broadly covers several subject fields, a single-field dictionary narrowly covers one particular subject field, and a sub-field dictionary covers a more specialized field.

==Online Dictionaries==
The age of the Internet brought online dictionaries to the desktop and, more recently, to the smartphone. 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."<ref>[https://books.google.com.bd/books?id=x91EUnnWwR8C&pg=PA41&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false Current Issues in Late Modern English - Google Books]</ref> 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.

==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.<ref>[https://books.google.com.bd/books?id=cqBkQFiTbX4C&pg=PA298&redir_esc=y Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: John Considine]</ref> 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, the dictionary is respelled as "dĭk′shə-nĕr′ē" in the American Heritage Dictionary. The IPA is more commonly used within the British Commonwealth countries. Yet others use their own pronunciation respelling systems without diacritics.

==References==
<references/>

[[Category: Dictionaries]]
[[Category: Lexicography]]
{{Kept on Wikipedia|Biggest version}}