The history of the word 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.^[1][2][3] It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.^[4]

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. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed^{[citation needed]} to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types.^[5] There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms (thesauri), and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary.^[6]

There is also a contrast between prescriptive or descriptive dictionaries; the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications (e.g. «informal» or «vulgar») in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive.^[7]

The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times around 2300 BCE, in the form of bilingual dictionaries, and the oldest surviving monolingual dictionaries are Chinese dictionaries c. 3rd century BCE. The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written in 1604, and monolingual dictionaries in other languages also began appearing in Europe at around this time. The systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest arose as a 20th-century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta.^[6] The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, with the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of having an «astonishing» lack of method and critical-self reflection.^[8]

History

The oldest known dictionaries were cuneiform tablets with bilingual Sumerian–Akkadian wordlists, discovered in Ebla (modern Syria) and dated to roughly 2300 BCE, the time of the Akkadian Empire.^[9][10][11] The early 2nd millennium BCE Urra=hubullu glossary is the canonical Babylonian version of such bilingual Sumerian wordlists. A Chinese dictionary, the c. 3rd century BCE Erya, is the earliest surviving monolingual dictionary; and some sources cite the Shizhoupian (probably compiled sometime between 700 BCE to 200 BCE, possibly earlier) as a «dictionary», although modern scholarship considers it a calligraphic compendium of Chinese characters from Zhou dynasty bronzes.^{[citation needed]} Philitas of Cos (fl. 4th century BCE) wrote a pioneering vocabulary Disorderly Words (Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι, Átaktoi glôssai) which explained the meanings of rare Homeric and other literary words, words from local dialects, and technical terms.^[12] Apollonius the Sophist (fl. 1st century CE) wrote the oldest surviving Homeric lexicon.^[10] The first Sanskrit dictionary, the Amarakośa, was written by Amarasimha c. 4th century CE. Written in verse, it listed around 10,000 words. According to the Nihon Shoki, the first Japanese dictionary was the long-lost 682 CE Niina glossary of Chinese characters. The oldest existing Japanese dictionary, the c. 835 CE Tenrei Banshō Meigi, was also a glossary of written Chinese. In Frahang-i Pahlavig, Aramaic heterograms are listed together with their translation in the Middle Persian language and phonetic transcription in the Pazend alphabet. A 9th-century CE Irish dictionary, Sanas Cormaic, contained etymologies and explanations of over 1,400 Irish words. In the 12th century, The Karakhanid-Turkic scholar Mahmud Kashgari finished his work «Divan-u Lügat’it Türk», a dictionary about the Turkic dialects, but especially Karakhanid Turkic. His work contains about 7500 to 8000 words and it was written to teach non Turkic Muslims, especially the Abbasid Arabs, the Turkic language.^[13] Al-Zamakhshari wrote a small Arabic dictionary called «Muḳaddimetü’l-edeb» for the Turkic-Khwarazm ruler Atsiz.^[14] In the 14th century, the Codex Cumanicus was finished and it served as a dictionary about the Cuman-Turkic language. While in Mamluk Egypt, Ebû Hayyân el-Endelüsî finished his work «Kitâbü’l-İdrâk li-lisâni’l-Etrâk», a dictionary about the Kipchak and Turcoman languages spoken in Egypt and the Levant.^[15] A dictionary called «Bahşayiş Lügati», which is written in old Anatolian Turkish, served also as a dictionary between Oghuz Turkish, Arabic and Persian. But it is not clear who wrote the dictionary or in which century exactly it was published. It was written in old Anatolian Turkish from the Seljuk period and not the late medieval Ottoman period.^[16] In India around 1320, Amir Khusro compiled the Khaliq-e-bari, which mainly dealt with Hindustani and Persian words.^[17]

Arabic dictionaries were compiled between the 8th and 14th centuries CE, organizing words in rhyme order (by the last syllable), by alphabetical order of the radicals, or according to the alphabetical order of the first letter (the system used in modern European language dictionaries). The modern system was mainly used in specialist dictionaries, such as those of terms from the Qur’an and hadith, while most general use dictionaries, such as the Lisan al-`Arab (13th century, still the best-known large-scale dictionary of Arabic) and al-Qamus al-Muhit (14th century) listed words in the alphabetical order of the radicals. The Qamus al-Muhit is the first handy dictionary in Arabic, which includes only words and their definitions, eliminating the supporting examples used in such dictionaries as the Lisan and the Oxford English Dictionary.^[18]

In medieval Europe, glossaries with equivalents for Latin words in vernacular or simpler Latin were in use (e.g. the Leiden Glossary). The Catholicon (1287) by Johannes Balbus, a large grammatical work with an alphabetical lexicon, was widely adopted. It served as the basis for several bilingual dictionaries and was one of the earliest books (in 1460) to be printed. In 1502 Ambrogio Calepino’s Dictionarium was published, originally a monolingual Latin dictionary, which over the course of the 16th century was enlarged to become a multilingual glossary. In 1532 Robert Estienne published the Thesaurus linguae latinae and in 1572 his son Henri Estienne published the Thesaurus linguae graecae, which served up to the 19th century as the basis of Greek lexicography. The first monolingual Spanish dictionary written was Sebastián Covarrubias’s Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, published in 1611 in Madrid, Spain.^[19] In 1612 the first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, for Italian, was published. It served as the model for similar works in French and English. In 1690 in Rotterdam was published, posthumously, the Dictionnaire Universel by Antoine Furetière for French. In 1694 appeared the first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (still published, with the ninth edition not complete as of 2021). Between 1712 and 1721 was published the Vocabulario portughez e latino written by Raphael Bluteau. The Real Academia Española published the first edition of the Diccionario de la lengua española (still published, with a new edition about every decade) in 1780; their Diccionario de Autoridades, which included quotes taken from literary works, was published in 1726. The Totius Latinitatis lexicon by Egidio Forcellini was firstly published in 1777; it has formed the basis of all similar works that have since been published.

The first edition of A Greek-English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott appeared in 1843; this work remained the basic dictionary of Greek until the end of the 20th century. And in 1858 was published the first volume of the Deutsches Wörterbuch by the Brothers Grimm; the work was completed in 1961. Between 1861 and 1874 was published the Dizionario della lingua italiana by Niccolò Tommaseo. Between 1862 and 1874 was published the six volumes of A magyar nyelv szótára (Dictionary of Hungarian Language) by Gergely Czuczor and János Fogarasi. Émile Littré published the Dictionnaire de la langue française between 1863 and 1872. In the same year 1863 appeared the first volume of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal which was completed in 1998. Also in 1863 Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl published the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. The Duden dictionary dates back to 1880, and is currently the prescriptive source for the spelling of German. The decision to start work on the Svenska Akademiens ordbok was taken in 1787.^[20]

English dictionaries in Britain

The earliest dictionaries in the English language were glossaries of French, Spanish or Latin words along with their definitions in English. The word «dictionary» was invented by an Englishman called John of Garland in 1220 – he had written a book Dictionarius to help with Latin «diction».^[21] An early non-alphabetical list of 8000 English words was the Elementarie, created by Richard Mulcaster in 1582.^[22][23]

The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written by English schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604.^[2][3] The only surviving copy is found at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This dictionary, and the many imitators which followed it, was seen as unreliable and nowhere near definitive. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield was still lamenting in 1754, 150 years after Cawdrey’s publication, that it is «a sort of disgrace to our nation, that hitherto we have had no… standard of our language; our dictionaries at present being more properly what our neighbors the Dutch and the Germans call theirs, word-books, than dictionaries in the superior sense of that title.»^[24]

In 1616, John Bullokar described the history of the dictionary with his «English Expositor». Glossographia by Thomas Blount, published in 1656, contains more than 10,000 words along with their etymologies or histories. Edward Phillips wrote another dictionary in 1658, entitled «The New World of English Words: Or a General Dictionary» which boldly plagiarized Blount’s work, and the two criticised each other. This created more interest in the dictionaries. John Wilkins’ 1668 essay on philosophical language contains a list of 11,500 words with careful distinctions, compiled by William Lloyd.^[25] Elisha Coles published his «English Dictionary» in 1676.

It was not until Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) that a more reliable English dictionary was produced.^[3] Many people today mistakenly believe that Johnson wrote the first English dictionary: a testimony to this legacy.^[2][26] By this stage, dictionaries had evolved to contain textual references for most words, and were arranged alphabetically, rather than by topic (a previously popular form of arrangement, which meant all animals would be grouped together, etc.). Johnson’s masterwork could be judged as the first to bring all these elements together, creating the first «modern» dictionary.^[26]

Johnson’s dictionary remained the English-language standard for over 150 years, until the Oxford University Press began writing and releasing the Oxford English Dictionary in short fascicles from 1884 onwards.^[3][27] It took nearly 50 years to complete this huge work, and they finally released the complete OED in twelve volumes in 1928.^[27] One of the main contributors to this modern dictionary was an ex-army surgeon, William Chester Minor, a convicted murderer who was confined to an asylum for the criminally insane.^[28]

The OED remains the most comprehensive and trusted English language dictionary to this day, with revisions and updates added by a dedicated team every three months.

American English dictionaries

In 1806, American Noah Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language.^[3] In 1807 Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-seven years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit.

Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France, and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced spellings that became American English, replacing «colour» with «color», substituting «wagon» for «waggon», and printing «center» instead of «centre». He also added American words, like «skunk» and «squash,» which did not appear in British dictionaries. At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828; it sold 2500 copies. In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes. Webster’s dictionary was acquired by G & C Merriam Co. in 1843, after his death, and has since been published in many revised editions. Merriam-Webster was acquired by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1964.

Controversy over the lack of usage advice in the 1961 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary spurred publication of the 1969 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the first dictionary to use corpus linguistics.

Types

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.^[29]

In many languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the undeclined 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. There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.

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: A multi-field dictionary broadly covers several subject fields (e.g. a business dictionary), a single-field dictionary narrowly covers one particular subject field (e.g. law), and a sub-field dictionary covers a more specialized field (e.g. constitutional law). For example, the 23-language Inter-Active Terminology for Europe is a multi-field dictionary, the American National Biography is a single-field, and the African American National Biography Project is a sub-field dictionary. In terms of the coverage distinction between «minimizing dictionaries» and «maximizing dictionaries», multi-field dictionaries tend to minimize coverage across subject fields (for instance, Oxford Dictionary of World Religions and Yadgar Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms)^[30] whereas single-field and sub-field dictionaries tend to maximize coverage within a limited subject field (The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology).

Another variant is the glossary, an alphabetical list of defined terms in a specialized field, such as medicine (medical dictionary).

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. 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.

Prescriptive vs. descriptive

Lexicographers apply two basic philosophies to the defining of words: prescriptive or descriptive. Noah Webster, intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language, altered spellings and accentuated differences in meaning and pronunciation of some words. This is why American English now uses the spelling color while the rest of the English-speaking world prefers colour. (Similarly, British English subsequently underwent a few spelling changes that did not affect American English; see further at American and British English spelling differences.)^[31]

Large 20th-century dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Webster’s Third are descriptive, and attempt to describe the actual use of words. Most dictionaries of English now apply the descriptive method to a word’s definition, and then, outside of the definition itself, provide information alerting readers to attitudes which may influence their choices on words often considered vulgar, offensive, erroneous, or easily confused.^[32] Merriam-Webster is subtle, only adding italicized notations such as, sometimes offensive or stand (nonstandard). American Heritage goes further, discussing issues separately in numerous «usage notes.» Encarta provides similar notes, but is more prescriptive, offering warnings and admonitions against the use of certain words considered by many to be offensive or illiterate, such as, «an offensive term for…» or «a taboo term meaning…».

Because of the widespread use of dictionaries in schools, and their acceptance by many as language authorities, their treatment of the language does affect usage to some degree, with even the most descriptive dictionaries providing conservative continuity. In the long run, however, the meanings of words in English are primarily determined by usage, and the language is being changed and created every day.^[33] As Jorge Luis Borges says in the prologue to «El otro, el mismo»: «It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature.»

Sometimes the same dictionary can be descriptive in some domains and prescriptive in others. For example, according to Ghil’ad Zuckermann, the Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary is «at war with itself»: whereas its coverage (lexical items) and glosses (definitions) are descriptive and colloquial, its vocalization is prescriptive. This internal conflict results in absurd sentences such as hi taharóg otí kshetiré me asíti lamkhonít (she’ll tear me apart when she sees what I’ve done to the car). Whereas hi taharóg otí, literally ‘she will kill me’, is colloquial, me (a variant of ma ‘what’) is archaic, resulting in a combination that is unutterable in real life.^[34]

Historical dictionaries

A historical dictionary is a specific kind of descriptive dictionary which describes the development of words and senses over time, usually using citations to original source material to support its conclusions.^[35]

Dictionaries for natural language processing

In contrast to traditional dictionaries, which are designed to be used by human beings, dictionaries for natural language processing (NLP) are built to be used by computer programs. The final user is a human being but the direct user is a program. Such a dictionary does not need to be able to be printed on paper. The structure of the content is not linear, ordered entry by entry but has the form of a complex network (see Diathesis alternation). Because most of these dictionaries are used to control machine translations or cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) the content is usually multilingual and usually of huge size. In order to allow formalized exchange and merging of dictionaries, an ISO standard called Lexical Markup Framework (LMF) has been defined and used among the industrial and academic community.^[36]

Other types

• Bilingual dictionary
• Collegiate dictionary (American)
• Learner’s dictionary (mostly British)
• Electronic dictionary
• Encyclopedic dictionary
• Monolingual learner’s dictionary
  • Advanced learner’s dictionary
• By sound
  • Rhyming dictionary
• Reverse dictionary (Conceptual dictionary)
• Visual dictionary
• Satirical dictionary
• Phonetic dictionary

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. For example, the definition for the word dictionary might be followed by the International Phonetic Alphabet spelling (in British English) or (in American English). American English dictionaries often use their own pronunciation respelling systems with diacritics, for example dictionary is respelled as «dĭk′shə-nĕr′ē» in the American Heritage Dictionary.^[37] The IPA is more commonly used within the British Commonwealth countries. Yet others use their own pronunciation respelling systems without diacritics: for example, dictionary may be respelled as DIK-shə-nerr-ee. Some online or electronic dictionaries provide audio recordings of words being spoken.

Examples

Major English dictionaries

Dictionaries of other languages

Histories and descriptions of the dictionaries of other languages on Wikipedia include:

• Arabic dictionaries
• Chinese dictionaries
• Dehkhoda Dictionary (Persian Language)
• Dutch dictionaries
• French dictionaries
• German dictionaries
• Japanese dictionaries
• Polish dictionaries
• Scottish Gaelic dictionaries
• Scottish Language Dictionaries
• Sindhi Language Dictionaries

Online dictionaries

The age of the Internet brought online dictionaries to the desktop and, more recently, to the smart phone. 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.»^[38]

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. Some of the more notable examples are given in List of online dictionaries and Category:Online dictionaries.

See also

Notes

References

• Bergenholtz, Henning; Tarp, Sven, eds. (1995). Manual of Specialised Lexicography: The Preparation of Specialised Dictionaries. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 90-272-1612-6.
• Erdmann, Peter; Cho, See-Young. «A Brief History of English Lexicography». Technische Universität Berlin. Archived from the original on 9 March 2008. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
• Landau, Sidney I. (2001) [1984]. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78040-3.
• Nielsen, Sandro (1994). The Bilingual LSP Dictionary: Principles and Practice for Legal Language. Tübingeb: Gunter Narr. ISBN 3-8233-4533-8.
• Nielsen, Sandro (2008). «The Effect of Lexicographical Information Costs on Dictionary Making and Use». Lexikos. 18: 170–189. ISSN 1684-4904.
• Atkins, B.T.S. & Rundell, Michael (2008) The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-927771-1
• Winchester, Simon (1998). The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0-06-099486-X. (published in the UK as The Surgeon of Crowthorne).
• P. G. J. van Sterkenburg, ed. (2003). A practical guide to lexicography. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-58811-381-8.

Further reading

• Guy Jean Forgue, «The Norm in American English», Revue Française d’Etudes Americaines, Nov 1983, Vol. 8 Issue 18, pp. 451–461. An international appreciation of the importance of Webster’s dictionaries in setting the norms of the English language.

External links

• Dictionary at Curlie
• Glossary of dictionary terms by the Oxford University Press
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • «Dictionary». Collier’s New Encyclopedia. 1921.
  • «Dictionary». Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
  • «Dictionary». New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
  • Wikisource:Language (directory of language-related works on Wikisource – includes dictionaries)

Last Updated:
2 Apr 2023
— Updated example sentences

For Wikimedia’s dictionary project visit Wiktionary, or see the Wiktionary article.

A dictionary (also called a wordbook, lexicon or vocabulary) is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information;^[1] or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon.^[1] According to Nielsen (2008) a dictionary may be regarded as a lexicographical product that is characterised by three significant features: (1) it has been prepared for one or more functions; (2) it contains data that have been selected for the purpose of fulfilling those functions; and (3) its lexicographic structures link and establish relationships between the data so that they can meet the needs of users and fulfill the functions of the dictionary.

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries do not contain information about words that are used in language for general purposes—words used by ordinary people in everyday situations. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types.^[2] There are other types of dictionaries that don’t fit neatly in the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms (thesauri), or rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a monolingual general-purpose dictionary.^[3]

A different dimension on which dictionaries (usually just general-purpose ones) are sometimes distinguished is whether they are prescriptive or descriptive, the latter being in theory largely based on linguistic corpus studies—this is the case of most modern dictionaries. However, this distinction cannot be upheld in the strictest sense. The choice of headwords is considered itself of prescriptive nature; for instance, dictionaries avoid having too many taboo words in that position. Stylistic indications (e.g. ‘informal’ or ‘vulgar’) present in many modern dictionaries is considered less than objectively descriptive as well.^[4]

Although the first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times (these were bilingual dictionaries), the systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest themselves is a 20th century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta.^[3] The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused of «astonishing» lack of method and critical-self reflection.^[5]

History

The oldest known dictionaries were Akkadian Empire cuneiform tablets with bilingual Sumerian–Akkadian wordlists, discovered in Ebla (modern Syria) and dated roughly 2300 BCE.^[6] The early 2nd millennium BCE Urra=hubullu glossary is the canonical Babylonian version of such bilingual Sumerian wordlists. A Chinese dictionary, the ca. 3rd century BCE Erya, was the earliest surviving monolingual dictionary, although some sources cite the ca. 800 BCE Shizhoupian as a «dictionary», modern scholarship considers it a calligraphic compendium of Chinese characters from Zhou dynasty bronzes. Philitas of Cos (fl. 4th century BCE) wrote a pioneering vocabulary Disorderly Words (Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι, Átaktoi glôssai) which explained the meanings of rare Homeric and other literary words, words from local dialects, and technical terms.^[7] Apollonius the Sophist (fl. 1st century CE) wrote the oldest surviving Homeric lexicon.^[6] The first Sanskrit dictionary, the Amarakośa, was written by Amara Sinha ca. 4th century CE. Written in verse, it listed around 10,000 words. According to the Nihon Shoki, the first Japanese dictionary was the long-lost 682 CE Niina glossary of Chinese characters. The oldest existing Japanese dictionary, the ca. 835 CE Tenrei Banshō Meigi, was also a glossary of written Chinese.

Arabic dictionaries were compiled between the 8th and 14th centuries CE, organizing words in rhyme order (by the last syllable), by alphabetical order of the radicals, or according to the alphabetical order of the first letter (the system used in modern European language dictionaries). The modern system was mainly used in specialist dictionaries, such as those of terms from the Qur’an and hadith, while most general use dictionaries, such as the Lisan al-`Arab (13th c., still the best-known large-scale dictionary of Arabic) and al-Qamus al-Muhit (14th c.) listed words in the alphabetical order of the radicals. The Qamus al-Muhit is the first handy dictionary in Arabic, which includes only words and their definitions, eliminating the supporting examples used in such dictionaries as the Lisan and the Oxford English Dictionary.^[8]

The earliest modern European dictionaries were bilingual dictionaries. In 1502 appeared the Cornucopia of Ambrogio Calepino, which in fact was a multilingual glossary. In 1532 Robert Estienne published the Thesaurus linguae latinae and in 1572 his son Henri Estienne published the Thesaurus linguae graecae, which served up to the nineteenth century as the basis of Greek lexicography. In 1612 was published the first edition of the Vocabolario dell’Accademia della Crusca, for Italian, which also served as the model for similar works in French, Spanish and English. In 1690 in Rotterdam was published, posthumously, the Dictionnaire Universel by Antoine Furetière for French. In 1694 appeared the first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française. Between 1712 and 1721 was published the Vocabulario portughez e latino written by Raphael Bluteau. The Real Academia Espanola published the first edition of the Diccionario de la lengua espanola in 1780. The Totius Latinitatis lexicon by Egidio Forcellini was firstly published in 1777, it has formed the basis of all similar works that have since been published.

The first edition of A Greek-English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott appeared in 1843; this work remained the basic dictionary of Greek until the end of the XX century. And in 1858 was published the first volume of the Deutsches Wörterbuch by the Brothers Grimm; the work was completed in 1961. Between 1861 and 1874 was published the Dizionario della lingua italiana by Niccolò Tommaseo. Émile Littré published the Dictionnaire de la langue française between 1863 and 1872. In the same year 1863 appeared the first volume of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal which was completed in 1998. Also in 1863 Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl published the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. The Duden dictionary dates back to 1880, and is currently the prescriptive source for the spelling of German. In 1898 was printed the first volume of the Svenska Akademiens ordbok, whose publication is still in progress.

English Dictionaries

The earliest dictionaries in the English language were glossaries of French, Italian or Latin words along with definitions of the foreign words in English. An early non-alphabetical list of 8000 English words was the Elementarie created by Richard Mulcaster in 1592.^[9][10]

The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written by English schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604. The only surviving copy is found at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Yet this early effort, as well as the many imitators which followed it, was seen as unreliable and nowhere near definitive. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield was still lamenting in 1754, 150 years after Cawdrey’s publication, that it is «a sort of disgrace to our nation, that hitherto we have had no… standard of our language; our dictionaries at present being more properly what our neighbors the Dutch and the Germans call theirs, word-books, than dictionaries in the superior sense of that title.» ^[11]

It was not until Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) that a truly noteworthy, reliable English Dictionary was deemed to have been produced, and the fact that today many people still mistakenly believe Johnson to have written the first English Dictionary is a testimony to this legacy.^[12] By this stage, dictionaries had evolved to contain textual references for most words, and were arranged alphabetically, rather than by topic (a previously popular form of arrangement, which meant all animals would be grouped together, etc.). Johnson’s masterwork could be judged as the first to bring all these elements together, creating the first ‘modern’ dictionary.^[12]

Johnson’s Dictionary remained the English-language standard for over 150 years, until the Oxford University Press began writing and releasing the Oxford English Dictionary in short fascicles from 1884 onwards. It took nearly 50 years to finally complete the huge work, and they finally released the complete OED in twelve volumes in 1928. It remains the most comprehensive and trusted English language dictionary to this day, with revisions and updates added by a dedicated team every three months. One of the main contributors to this modern day dictionary was an ex-army surgeon, William Chester Minor, a convicted murderer who was confined to an asylum for the criminally insane.^[13]

American Dictionaries

In 1806, American Noah Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. In 1807 Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-seven years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country used different languages. They also spelled, pronounced, and used English words differently.

Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France, and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings, replacing «colour» with «color», substituting «wagon» for «waggon», and printing «center» instead of «centre». He also added American words, like «skunk» and «squash», that did not appear in British dictionaries. At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828; it sold 2500 copies. In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes.

Austin (2005) explores the intersection of lexicographical and poetic practices in American literature, and attempts to map out a «lexical poetics» using Webster’s definitions as his base. He explores how American poets used Webster’s dictionaries, often drawing upon his lexicography in order to express their word play. Austin explicates key definitions from both the Compendious (1806) and American (1828) dictionaries, and brings into its discourse a range of concerns, including the politics of American English, the question of national identity and culture in the early moments of American independence, and the poetics of citation and of definition. Austin concludes that Webster’s dictionaries helped redefine Americanism in an era of an emergent and unstable American political and cultural identity. Webster himself saw the dictionaries as a nationalizing device to separate America from Britain, calling his project a «federal language», with competing forces towards regularity on the one hand and innovation on the other. Austin suggests that the contradictions of Webster’s lexicography were part of a larger play between liberty and order within American intellectual discourse, with some pulled toward Europe and the past, and others pulled toward America and the new future.^[14]

For an international appreciation of the importance of Webster’s dictionaries in setting the norms of the English language, see Forque (1982).^[15]

General dictionaries

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.^[16]

In many languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the undeclined 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. There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.

Specialized dictionaries

According to the Manual of Specialized Lexicographies a specialized dictionary (also referred to as a technical dictionary) is a lexicon that focuses upon a specific subject field. Following the description in The Bilingual LSP Dictionary lexicographers categorize specialized dictionaries into three types. A multi-field dictionary broadly covers several subject fields (e.g., a business dictionary), a single-field dictionary narrowly covers one particular subject field (e.g., law), and a sub-field dictionary covers a singular field (e.g., constitutional law). For example, the 23-language Inter-Active Terminology for Europe is a multi-field dictionary, the American National Biography is a single-field, and the African American National Biography Project is a sub-field dictionary. In terms of the above coverage distinction between «minimizing dictionaries» and «maximizing dictionaries», multi-field dictionaries tend to minimize coverage across subject fields (for instance, Oxford Dictionary of World Religions) whereas single-field and sub-field dictionaries tend to maximize coverage within a limited subject field (The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology). See also LSP dictionary

Glossaries

Another variant is the glossary, an alphabetical list of defined terms in a specialised field, such as medicine or science. 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. 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.

Pronunciation

Dictionaries for languages for which the pronunciation of words is not apparent from their spelling, such as the English language, usually provide the pronunciation, often using the International Phonetic Alphabet. For example, the definition for the word dictionary might be followed by the phonemic spelling /ˈdɪkʃənɛri/. American dictionaries, however, often use their own pronunciation spelling systems, for example dictionary [dĭkʹ shə nâr ē] while the IPA is more commonly used within the British Commonwealth countries. Yet others use an ad hoc notation; for example, dictionary may become [DIK-shuh-nair-ee]. Some on-line or electronic dictionaries provide recordings of words being spoken.

Variations between dictionaries

Prescription and description

Lexicographers apply two basic philosophies to the defining of words: prescriptive or descriptive. Noah Webster, intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language, altered spellings and accentuated differences in meaning and pronunciation of some words. This is why American English now uses the spelling color while the rest of the English-speaking world prefers colour. (Similarly, British English subsequently underwent a few spelling changes that did not affect American English; see further at American and British English spelling differences.) Large 20th-century dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Webster’s Third are descriptive, and attempt to describe the actual use of words.

While descriptivists argue that prescriptivism is an unnatural attempt to dictate usage or curtail change, prescriptivists argue that to indiscriminately document «improper» or «inferior» usages sanctions those usages by default and causes language to deteriorate. Although the debate can become very heated, only a small number of controversial words are usually affected. But the softening of usage notations, from the previous edition, for two words, ain’t and irregardless, out of over 450,000 in Webster’s Third in 1961, was enough to provoke outrage among many with prescriptivist leanings, who branded the dictionary as «permissive.»

The prescriptive/descriptive issue has been given much consideration in modern times. Most dictionaries of English now apply the descriptive method to a word’s definition, and then, outside of the definition itself, add information alerting readers to attitudes which may influence their choices on words often considered vulgar, offensive, erroneous, or easily confused. Merriam-Webster is subtle, only adding italicized notations such as, sometimes offensive or nonstand (nonstandard.) American Heritage goes further, discussing issues separately in numerous «usage notes.» Encarta provides similar notes, but is more prescriptive, offering warnings and admonitions against the use of certain words considered by many to be offensive or illiterate, such as, «an offensive term for…» or «a taboo term meaning…»

Because of the widespread use of dictionaries in schools, and their acceptance by many as language authorities, their treatment of the language does affect usage to some degree, even the most descriptive dictionaries providing conservative continuity. In the long run, however, the meanings of words in English are primarily determined by usage, and the language is being changed and created every day.^[17] As Jorge Luis Borges says in the prologue to «El otro, el mismo»: «It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature.«

Major English dictionaries

Dictionaries of other languages

Histories and descriptions of the dictionaries of other languages include Scottish Language Dictionaries, Japanese dictionary, Chinese dictionary, and the list of French dictionaries.

Online dictionaries

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. Some of the more notable examples include:

See also

Notes

References

• Bergenholtz, Henning; Tarp, Sven, eds (1995). Manual of Specialised Lexicography: The Preparation of Specialised Dictionaries. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 9027216126.
• Erdmann, Peter; Cho, See-Young. «A Brief History of English Lexicography». Technische Universität Berlin. Archived from the original on 9 March 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080309181613/http://angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/b_history.html. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
• Landau, Sidney I. (2001) [1984]. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521780403.
• Nielsen, Sandro (1994). The Bilingual LSP Dictionary: Principles and Practice for Legal Language. Tübingeb: Gunter Narr. ISBN 3823345338.
• Nielsen, Sandro (2008). «The Effect of Lexicographical Information Costs on Dictionary Making and Use». Lexikos 18: 170–189. ISSN 1684-4904.
• Atkins, B.T.S. & Rundell, Michael (2008) The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978019927771-1
• Winchester, Simon (1998). The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 006099486X. (published in the UK as The Surgeon of Crowthorne).
• P. G. J. van Sterkenburg, ed (2003). A practical guide to lexicography. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9781588113818.

External links

• Dictionary at the Open Directory Project
• Glossary of dictionary terms by the Oxford University Press
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • «Dictionary». Collier’s New Encyclopedia. 1921.
  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). «Dictionary». Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  • «Dictionary». New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
  • Wikisource:Languages (directory of language-related works on Wikisource – includes dictionaries)

Table of contents

• A brief History of Dictionaries
  • The dictionaries of ancient civilisations
    • The development of dictionaries in the Common Era
    • Monolingual European dictionaries
    • Dr Johnson and English dictionaries
    • Dictionaries in the electronic age
    • Dictionaries for natural language processing
    • What is a dictionary?

We have all used a dictionary at some point in our lives. But how many of us have questioned the nature of the reference work we are reading or how it was evolved? It’s tempting to think that there can be little argument about what a dictionary is or at least what it should be. 

But if you believe that dictionaries have always been monolingual reference works with words and their meanings listed in alphabetical order, think again! 

What is the meaning of a word anyway? Is it what scholars deem to be correct or is it how that word is used in the real world? In other words (forgive the pun), should the meanings provided by dictionaries be prescriptive or descriptive? 

Since the first examples were compiled, dictionaries have variously been prescriptive, descriptive, multilingual and monolingual. Most have not been created to encompass every word in any given language. Instead, they have been created to help people understand the language or terminology of a specific subject, industry or theme. 

The dictionaries of ancient civilisations

The earliest reference works that we might think of as dictionaries date back more than 4,000 years. Tablets featuring lists of words have been found in the region we now know as Syria. These were created around 2300 BCE during the time of the Akkadian Empire, a Mesopotamian civilisation. The tablets weren’t truly dictionaries but rather bilingual glossaries. You could say that they were the earliest form of translation tool. 

The earliest monolingual dictionary that has survived is the Erya, a Chinese collection of glosses (brief notations) that is thought to date back to the third century BCE. It was essentially a dictionary, glossary, thesaurus and encyclopaedia in one work. The Eyra contained 2094 entries and was divided into nineteen sections by subject. The last seven sections covered flora and fauna, making the book an important natural history reference work. Its author has never been confirmed but the Erya has been attributed by many to Confucius.

The earliest dictionaries were organised in themes or subjects rather than alphabetically.  They provided explanations of difficult words associated with specific aspects of life such as religious documents and literature. They did not encompass common speech and writing. For example, in the 4^th century BCE Philitas of Cos wrote Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι (Disorderly Words). This explained the meanings of Homeric and other literary words together with technical terms.

The development of dictionaries in the Common Era

The first Sanskrit dictionary, the Amarakośa, was written in the 4^th century CE and contained around 10,000 words.  The first Japanese dictionary was the Niina glossary of Chinese characters and was written in 682 CE, but this work has since been lost and never recovered. The oldest Japanese dictionary to have survived is the Tenrei Banshō Meigi, written circa 835 CE. This was also a glossary of Chinese characters.

One of the earliest European dictionaries was the Sanas Cormaic, written in the 9^th century CE. This Irish dictionary contained explanations of more than 1400 words. In the 12^th century CE, the Turkic scholar Mahmud Kashgari completed his Divan-u Lügat’it Türk. This was a dictionary of Turkic dialects containing over 7,000 words that was created to teach Arab Muslims the Turkic language.

In medieval Europe, a number of Latin glossaries were created including the Catholicon, written in 1287 by Johannes Balbus. This dictionary featured an alphabetical lexicon and was widely adopted. It was one of the first books to be printed.

During the 14^th century in Egypt, Ebû Hayyân el-Endelüsî wrote his Kitâbü’l-İdrâk li-lisâni’l-Etrâk, a dictionary about the Kipchak and Turcoman languages.

Between the 8^th and 14^th centuries, a number of Arabic dictionaries were produced. These were arranged in various ways with some having entries being organised in rhyme order (by the last syllable). Others, mainly specialist dictionaries, were arranged in alphabetical order of the first letter, the system that is now used in modern European language dictionaries.

The first dictionaries in English featured explanations in both English and French of Latin terms. This was because all three languages were in use simultaneously in Britain at the dawn of the Renaissance. The languages were used for different purposes such as religion, politics and commerce and so inspired the need for reference works to explain them.

It wasn’t until the 17^th century that monolingual dictionaries that were significant in scope were complied. Until this time, dictionaries were primarily translation tools. Monolingual dictionaries had been created over the centuries. But these were generally compiled only to explain unusual words or the terminology of specific subjects, not commonly used words. It was only in the 19^th century that scholars embraced the idea that dictionaries should contain all words that were in common use.

Monolingual European dictionaries

The first European monolingual dictionary was Tesoro de la lengua castellana o Española, a Spanish work, written by Sebastián Covarrubias. This was published in 1611 and was to serve as a model for similar dictionaries produced in French and English. These included the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française that appeared in 1694. It is still published to this day. During the 18^th and 19^th centuries, monolingual dictionaries became increasingly common and were compiled in many European countries. The need for dictionaries increased when a greater proportion of the European population had gained access to education and became literate.

Dr Johnson and English dictionaries

Several English dictionaries had been written before Dr Johnson produced his iconic work, A Dictionary of the English Language, which was first published in 1755. But the earlier dictionaries featured far fewer words and were not considered to contain reliable information. Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeicall contained 2,543 words, whereas Johnson’s tome contained 42,773 words that were arranged alphabetically. 

Johnson’s listings featured references to the usage of the words and his work became the standard English dictionary. It wasn’t supplanted as the standard reference work until the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was published in its entirety in 1928. The OED was an enormous project that took far longer than initially anticipated. It was published in fascicles (instalments) until it was finally completed 44 years after work to compile it began. The OED has been continually updated ever since to reflect new words and usages. In 1992 it became available on CD-ROM.

Despite the impressive scope of the OED and similar dictionaries in other languages, most still do not include many of the most commonly used words – swear words.

Dictionaries in the electronic age

Until the 20^th century, whether written in stone or printed on paper, a dictionary was always a physical entity. Things are very different now. Advances in technology have seen dictionaries become available in the form of electronic data that can be accessed in a variety of ways. 

Most of the early electronic dictionaries were merely the content of printed dictionaries made available in electronic form. However, while the content was the same, electronic forms of dictionaries offered search functions that made them far more useful. Digital dictionaries presented many new and exciting possibilities that have since been exploited.

Electronic dictionaries are essentially databases. There is no limit to their size and their compilers do not need to be mindful of the amount of space the information will take up. Such databases can include reference sections, verb conjugations, interactive features and even video clips. Both general and specialist electronic dictionaries are available online, as downloads, on CD-ROM or in the form of portable devices.

Dictionaries for natural language processing

Traditional dictionaries are reference works designed to be used by people, whether they are databases or in print. Dictionaries for natural language processing are built to be used by computer software. These do not have content arranged in linear fashion – they are complex networks of information. Most of these dictionaries are used for machine translation and so have multilingual content that is enormous in scope.

What is a dictionary?

Dictionaries have come a long way since the first examples were etched into stone tablets. Once limited in size and usually multilingual, they became monolingual and much larger in scope. Dictionaries were originally works that addressed specific subjects or themes. But then ambitious scholars attempted to include every word of a language in a single dictionary. Later, new technology removed any limitations on the scope of such reference works. Globalisation and rapid advances in technology inspired a return to the creation of multilingual and specialist dictionaries. Now, dictionaries are built not only to help humans but to support computer software in producing accurate and appropriate translations. 

It would be difficult to define exactly what a dictionary is as dictionaries vary so greatly in their form, purpose and scope.

While dictionaries are usually considered to be authoritative and factual, they are always to some extent subjective, as the information they contain has been researched, chosen and defined by humans.

We understand that all languages are fluid, changing greatly over time. The generally accepted meanings of words can change, new words are invented and words are borrowed from other languages. No dictionary is ever finished, it is always a work in progress, whatever its form.

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