dictionary

Definition:

A reference book containing an alphabetical list of words, with information given for each word.

The following kinds of information commonly appear in dictionary entries:

• Spelling (with marks indicating syllabic divisions)
• Pronunciation
• Word class (or part of speech)
• Meanings (or definitions)
• Etymology (or word history)
• Usage notes
• Synonyms and antonymns
• Idioms in which the word commonly appears

See also:

• Compounding
• The Connotative Power of Words
• The Earliest English Dictionaries
• Etymology Exercise: Exploring Word Origins
• Glossary
• Introduction to Etymology
• An Introduction to Noah Webster
• Lexicographer
• Lexicographicolatry
• Lexicography
• Lexicology
• Lexicon
• Noah Webster's Plan to Reform English Spelling
• Practice in Using a Dictionary to Check Spelling
• Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
• Spellchecker
• What Is a Ghost Word?
• Which "Webster's Dictionary" Is the Real Thing?
• Writers on Writing: Ten Tips for Finding the Right Words

Etymology:

From the Latin, "to say"

Observations:

• "The writing of a dictionary . . . is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the 'true meanings' of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past. The writer of a dictionary is a historian, not a lawgiver. If, for example, we had been writing a dictionary in 1890, or even as late as 1919, we could have said that the word 'broadcast' means 'to scatter' (seed, for example), but we could not have decreed that from 1921 on, the most common meaning of the word should become 'to disseminate audible messages, etc., by radio transmission.' To regard the dictionary as an 'authority,' therefore, is to credit the dictionary writer with gifts of prophecy which neither he nor anyone else possesses. In choosing our words when we speak or write, we can be guided by the historical record afforded us by the dictionary, but we cannot be bound by it. Looking under a 'hood,' we should ordinarily have found, five hundred years ago, a monk; today, we find a motorcar engine."
  (S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 1978)



• "A dictionary is an observatory, not a conservatory."
  (attributed to Stephen Fry)



• Dr. Samuel Johnson: [places the manuscript of his newly completed dictionary on the table] Here it is, sir. The very cornerstone of English scholarship. This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.
  Blackadder: Every single one, sir?
  Dr. Johnson: Every single word, sir!
  Blackadder: Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.
  Dr. Johnson: What?
  Blackadder: Contrafribularities, sir? It is a common word down our way.
  Dr. Johnson: Damn!
  Blackadder: Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anispeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.
  ("Ink and Incapability," Blackadder, 1987)



• "Many people mistakenly credit [Samuel] Johnson with writing the first English dictionary. That achievement belongs to a man named Cawdrey, who, 150 years before Johnson, published A Table Aphabetical. It was only 144 pages and defined some 2,500 dificult words; the rest people were just supposed to know. With its emphasis on boosting vocabulary, Cawdrey's book is a lot like modern-day titles that help you pump up your word aresenal before attacking the SAT or waging war in the corporate world."
  (David Wolman, Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling. Harper, 2010)



• "If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word."
  (Dave Barry)



• "[T]he familiar notion that a word of English exists only if it is 'in the dictionary' is false. A word exists if people use it. But that word may fail to appear in a particular dictionary published at a particular time because it is too new, or too specialized, or too localized, or too much confined to a particular social group to make it into that edition of the dictionary."
  (R.L. Trask, Mind the Gaffe! Harper, 2006)



• "[E]ven the largest dictionaries can't capture every possible word in the language. The number of possible word combinations of word elements like pre-, pter, and scope and the innumerable amount of speaking and writing done in English require that dictionary editors restrict themselves to listing only the most frequent words in a language, and even then, only those used over a substantial period of time. Dictionaries are therefore always at least slightly out of date and inaccurate in their descriptions of the language's stock of words. In addition, the use of many words is restricted to specific domains. For example, medical terminology involves a tremendous number of words unfamiliar to those outside the medical community. Many of these terms never enter general dictionaries of the language and can only be found in specialized medical dictionaries."
  (Keith Denning, Brett Kessler, and William R. Leben, English Vocabulary Elements, 2nd ed. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007)

Pronunciation: DIK-shun-air-ee