Definition:
A reference book containing an alphabetical list of words, with information (including meanings (or definitions), pronunciation, and etymology) given for each word. See also:
- Lexicon
- Which "Webster's Dictionary" Is the Real Thing?
- The Earliest English Dictionaries
- Introduction to Etymology
- Reference Works for Writers
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to say"Observations:
- 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. Samuel 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. Samuel Johnson: What?
Blackadder: Contrafribularities, sir? It is a common word down our way.
Dr. Samuel 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) - "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. . . . 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) - "Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it."
(Ernest Hemingway)
Pronunciation: DIK-shun-air-ee
