EncycloZine

1. A book containing the words of a language, arranged alphabetically, with explanations of their meanings; a lexicon; a vocabulary; a wordbook.

"I applied myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials of a dictionary." Johnson.

2. Hence, a book containing the words belonging to any system or province of knowledge, arranged alphabetically; as, a dictionary of medicine or of botany; a biographical dictionary.

A work of reference, traditionally in the form of a book, and now often available as a computational data base, giving linguistic information about the words of a language, arranged in alphabetical order under headwords (or catchwords). Dictionaries may be bilingual or multilingual, giving only lists of word correspondences between the languages, or they may provide information about the senses, pronunciation, and grammatical status of the headwords, and illustrate the idiomatic usages into which they can enter.

Monolingual dictionaries generally present these facts in varying degrees of detail (depending on the size of the dictionary), expanding on the range of meanings and uses of a word. A historical dictionary, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, provides an account of changes in word forms and meanings, based on usage citations.

Some dictionaries (especially those falling within the US and European - particularly French and German - traditions) add encyclopedic data, in the form of pictures, tables, and facts about people and places, or provide special features, such as notes on usage or closely related words (synonym essays). Etymological dictionaries give information on the historical derivation of the headwords, and on the changes in meaning which they have undergone over time.

The term is also applied to short-entry reference books, encyclopedic rather than lexicological in character, which deal only with biography, geography, or other specific subjects. The process of compiling dictionaries, and the study of the issues involved, is known as lexicography.

Online dictionaries

• xrefer "the web's reference engine" offers access to dictionaries and other reference works.
• Dictionary.com offers a dictionary and thesaurus and other language aids.
• Links to several online dictionaries.
• another collection of dictionaries
• The Early Modern English Dictionaries Database -- A collection of the earliest English language dictionaries.
• Pseudodictionary A collection of slang, recent colloquialisms and humorous fake and made-up words.

Collaborative Dictionaries

A dictionary project not unlike Wikipedia is the GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English (GCIDE). This dictionary uses Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) and WordNet as its sources and is being developed collaboratively under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It describes itself as "a freely-available set of ASCII files containing the marked-up text of a substantial English dictionary".

• Call for collaborators contains a statement of the project's aims.
• The GNU version of The Collaborative International Dictionary of English, presented in the Extensible Markup Language An XML version of the dictionary, along with an online search facility.

Other collaborative dictionary projects:

• Everything2 contains among other things an entire Webster 1913 dictionary.
• www.wiktionary.org Wikipedia's sister project.

Further Reading

• A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson, London, 1755 (many facsimile and later editions exist and can be purchased for a reasonable price).
• Dictionaries, The Art and Craft of Lexicography, Sidney I. Landau, Simon & Schuster, 1998, hardcover,ISBN: 0684180960
• The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester, HarperPerennial, New York, 1998, trade paperback,ISBN: 0060175966. (published in the UK as The Surgeon of Crowthorne)