A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. In some languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the lemma form appears as the main word or headword in most dictionaries. Many dictionaries also provide pronunciation information; grammatical information; word derivations, histories, or etymologies; illustrations; usage guidance; and examples in phrases or sentences. Dictionaries are most commonly found in ...

Including:

• Dictionary - Word order
• Dictionary - Pronunciation
• Dictionary - Coverage
• Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries
• Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries
• Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries
• Dictionary - Character dictionaries
• Dictionary - Glossaries
• Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries
• Dictionary - Prescription and description
• Dictionary - Other variations
• Dictionary - History
• Dictionary - Miscellaneous
• Dictionary - List of major dictionaries
• Dictionary - Arabic
• Dictionary - Catalan
• Dictionary - Chinese
• Dictionary - Dutch
• Dictionary - English
• Dictionary - French
• Dictionary - German
• Dictionary - Italian
• Dictionary - Japanese
• Dictionary - Norwegian
• Dictionary - Portuguese
• Dictionary - Romanian
• Dictionary - Spanish
• Dictionary - Swedish
• Dictionary - Urdu
• Dictionary - Publishers
• Dictionary - List of online dictionaries
• Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries

There are many different types of dictionaries, including bilingual, multilingual, historical, biographical, and geographical dictionaries. Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries. In bilingual dictionaries, each entry has translations of words in another language. For example, in a Japanese-English dictionary, the entry tsuki has the corresponding English word, moon. In dictionaries between English and a language using a non-Roman script, entry words in the non-English language may either be printed and sorted in the native ...

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Dictionary, Dictionary - Word order, Dictionary - Pronunciation, Dictionary - Coverage, Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries, Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries, Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries, Dictionary - Character dictionaries, Dictionary - Glossaries, Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries, Dictionary - Prescription and description, Dictionary - Other variations, Dictionary - History, Dictionary - Miscellaneous, Dictionary - List of major dictionaries, Dictionary - Arabic, Dictionary - Catalan, Dictionary - Chinese, Dictionary - Dutch, Dictionary - English, Dictionary - French, Dictionary - German, Dictionary - Italian, Dictionary - Japanese, Dictionary - Norwegian, Dictionary - Portuguese, Dictionary - Romanian, Dictionary - Spanish, Dictionary - Swedish, Dictionary - Urdu, Dictionary - Publishers, Dictionary - List of online dictionaries, Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries

Dictionary - Prescription and description. Dictionary makers apply two basic philosophies to the defining of words: prescriptive or descriptive. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is descriptive, and attempts to describe the actual use of words. Noah Webster, on the other hand, intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language, altered spellings and accentuated differences in meaning and pronunciation of numerous words. This is why American English now uses the spelling ...

See also:

Dictionary, Dictionary - Word order, Dictionary - Pronunciation, Dictionary - Coverage, Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries, Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries, Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries, Dictionary - Character dictionaries, Dictionary - Glossaries, Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries, Dictionary - Prescription and description, Dictionary - Other variations, Dictionary - History, Dictionary - Miscellaneous, Dictionary - List of major dictionaries, Dictionary - Arabic, Dictionary - Catalan, Dictionary - Chinese, Dictionary - Dutch, Dictionary - English, Dictionary - French, Dictionary - German, Dictionary - Italian, Dictionary - Japanese, Dictionary - Norwegian, Dictionary - Portuguese, Dictionary - Romanian, Dictionary - Spanish, Dictionary - Swedish, Dictionary - Urdu, Dictionary - Publishers, Dictionary - List of online dictionaries, Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries

Today, dictionaries of languages with alphabetic and syllabic writing systems list words in alphabetical or some analogous phonetic order. Words and characters in ideographic writing systems such as Chinese are sorted according to one of numerous schemes based on the components, number of strokes, overall shape, or pronunciation of each character. Due to the nature of Chinese characters, linear sorts are particularly unsuitable for Chinese dictionaries. (See collation for mor ...

See also:

Dictionary, Dictionary - Word order, Dictionary - Pronunciation, Dictionary - Coverage, Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries, Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries, Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries, Dictionary - Character dictionaries, Dictionary - Glossaries, Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries, Dictionary - Prescription and description, Dictionary - Other variations, Dictionary - History, Dictionary - Miscellaneous, Dictionary - List of major dictionaries, Dictionary - Arabic, Dictionary - Catalan, Dictionary - Chinese, Dictionary - Dutch, Dictionary - English, Dictionary - French, Dictionary - German, Dictionary - Italian, Dictionary - Japanese, Dictionary - Norwegian, Dictionary - Portuguese, Dictionary - Romanian, Dictionary - Spanish, Dictionary - Swedish, Dictionary - Urdu, Dictionary - Publishers, Dictionary - List of online dictionaries, Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries

An open content dictionary project is the Collaborative International Dictionary of English, using Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) and WordNet as its sources. The GNU version of it, GCIDE, is being developed collaboratively under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Other collaborative dictionary projects: Papillon Multilingual Dictionary with a Pivot Structure [2] EDICT Digital Japanese-English dictionary. [3] Everything2 Contains, among other things, an entire Webster 1 ...

See also:

Dictionary, Dictionary - Word order, Dictionary - Pronunciation, Dictionary - Coverage, Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries, Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries, Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries, Dictionary - Character dictionaries, Dictionary - Glossaries, Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries, Dictionary - Prescription and description, Dictionary - Other variations, Dictionary - History, Dictionary - Miscellaneous, Dictionary - List of major dictionaries, Dictionary - Arabic, Dictionary - Catalan, Dictionary - Chinese, Dictionary - Dutch, Dictionary - English, Dictionary - French, Dictionary - German, Dictionary - Italian, Dictionary - Japanese, Dictionary - Norwegian, Dictionary - Portuguese, Dictionary - Romanian, Dictionary - Spanish, Dictionary - Swedish, Dictionary - Urdu, Dictionary - Publishers, Dictionary - List of online dictionaries, Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries

Dictionary - Arabic. Kitab al-Ayn Al Mujam al waseet Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic Dictionary - Catalan. Diccionari de l'Enciclopèdia Catalana Diccionari de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans Dictionary - Chinese. Shuowen Jiezi Kangxi Zidian Rime dictionary Dictionary - Dutch. < ...

See also:

Dictionary, Dictionary - Word order, Dictionary - Pronunciation, Dictionary - Coverage, Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries, Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries, Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries, Dictionary - Character dictionaries, Dictionary - Glossaries, Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries, Dictionary - Prescription and description, Dictionary - Other variations, Dictionary - History, Dictionary - Miscellaneous, Dictionary - List of major dictionaries, Dictionary - Arabic, Dictionary - Catalan, Dictionary - Chinese, Dictionary - Dutch, Dictionary - English, Dictionary - French, Dictionary - German, Dictionary - Italian, Dictionary - Japanese, Dictionary - Norwegian, Dictionary - Portuguese, Dictionary - Romanian, Dictionary - Spanish, Dictionary - Swedish, Dictionary - Urdu, Dictionary - Publishers, Dictionary - List of online dictionaries, Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries

The art and craft of writing dictionaries is called lexicography. One of the earliest dictionaries known, and which is still extant today in an abridged form, was written in Latin during the reign of the emperor Augustus. It is known by the title "De Significatu Verborum" ("On the meaning of words") and was originally compiled by Verrius Flaccus. It was twice abridged in succeeding centuries, first by Festus, and then by Paul the Deacon. Verrius Flaccus' dictionary was an abridged list of difficult or antiquated words, whose usage was illustrated b ...

See also:

Dictionary, Dictionary - Word order, Dictionary - Pronunciation, Dictionary - Coverage, Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries, Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries, Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries, Dictionary - Character dictionaries, Dictionary - Glossaries, Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries, Dictionary - Prescription and description, Dictionary - Other variations, Dictionary - History, Dictionary - Miscellaneous, Dictionary - List of major dictionaries, Dictionary - Arabic, Dictionary - Catalan, Dictionary - Chinese, Dictionary - Dutch, Dictionary - English, Dictionary - French, Dictionary - German, Dictionary - Italian, Dictionary - Japanese, Dictionary - Norwegian, Dictionary - Portuguese, Dictionary - Romanian, Dictionary - Spanish, Dictionary - Swedish, Dictionary - Urdu, Dictionary - Publishers, Dictionary - List of online dictionaries, Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries

Dictionaries have had a variety of means of expressing the means of pronouncing words in those languages that are not entirely phonetic. Three different methods are common. The earliest was simply to indicate the syllables that have greater stress using accent marks, such as in Samuel Johnson's eighteenth century dictionary. Here the accent mark followed the stressed syllable. This is analogous to the tonal marks for Chinese or the accent nucleus for Japanese. Regular languages such as Spanish do no ...

See also:

Dictionary, Dictionary - Word order, Dictionary - Pronunciation, Dictionary - Coverage, Dictionary - Special-purpose dictionaries, Dictionary - Bilingual dictionaries, Dictionary - Specialized dictionaries, Dictionary - Character dictionaries, Dictionary - Glossaries, Dictionary - Variations between dictionaries, Dictionary - Prescription and description, Dictionary - Other variations, Dictionary - History, Dictionary - Miscellaneous, Dictionary - List of major dictionaries, Dictionary - Arabic, Dictionary - Catalan, Dictionary - Chinese, Dictionary - Dutch, Dictionary - English, Dictionary - French, Dictionary - German, Dictionary - Italian, Dictionary - Japanese, Dictionary - Norwegian, Dictionary - Portuguese, Dictionary - Romanian, Dictionary - Spanish, Dictionary - Swedish, Dictionary - Urdu, Dictionary - Publishers, Dictionary - List of online dictionaries, Dictionary - List of collaborative dictionaries