What is a dictionary?

General information on dictionary use

What is a dictionary?

A dictionary is a reference book about words and as such it describes the functioning of individual words (sometimes called lexical items ). It does so by listing these words in alphabetical order in the form of headwords, the words listed as entries in the dictionary.

What is the difference between a dictionary, an encyclopedia and a thesaurus?

Even though this section focuses on dictionaries, it will be useful initially to distinguish between a dictionary, an

encyclopedia and a thesaurus . Both a dictionary and an encyclopedia are reference works, but whereas an encyclopedia conveys knowledge about the world as we know it (e.g. things, people, places and ideas), the dictionary gives information about certain items in the communication system (the language) used by people to exchange messages about the world.

A further distinction can be made between a dictionary and a thesaurus, where the latter can be seen as a word book which is structured around lexical items of a language according to sense relations, most notably synonomy (words having the same or very similar meanings) (Kirkness, 2004).

Click on the link below to access the online version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Encyclopaedia Britannica

What different types of dictionary are there?

One distinction that can be made is that between dictionaries that deal with one single language and those that deal with several languages. Firstly, a dictionary that deals only with one language is called a monolingual dictionary . For example, English monolingual dictionaries like the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) or the

Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (CCALD) have English headwords, English definitions, and all examples and additional information are given in English.

Secondly, a dictionary that deals with two languages (e.g. English-Swedish) is called a bilingual dictionary. For example,

Norstedts Stora Svensk-Engelska Ordbok (Norstedts, 2000) presents headwords in Swedish, whereas meanings (translation equivalents) are given in English. Example sentences are often given in both languages.

Thirdly, a dictionary that deals with more than two languages is called a

multilingual dictionary .

All these types of dictionary can furthermore be divided into general or specialised dictionaries. The general dictionaries, as the name implies, deal with the more general side of one or several languages. For example,

Norstedts Stora Engelsk-Svenska Ordbok (Norstedts, 2000) is aimed a covering some 135,000 of the most commonly occurring words of English.

A specialized dictionary, on the other hand, focuses on a more narrow and specialized part of a language, for example the words used in engineering, medicine, aviation, experimental psychology, etc. The specialized dictionary is thus typically a subject-specific technical dictionary, but other types exist too, e.g. dictionaries of false friends, pictorial dictionaries, collocation dictionaries, idiom dictionaries, etc.)

For what purposes are dictionaries typically used?

Even though dictionaries can be used for many different purposes, a useful distinction that can be made is that between comprehension (decoding) and production (encoding) purposes. Nation (2001) provides the following lists of typical uses:

Typical comprehension uses are:

Looking up unknown words that are encountered when listening

or reading

Confirming the meanings of partially known words

Conforming guesses from context

Typical production uses are:

Looking up unknown words needed to speak or write

Looking up spelling, pronunciation, meaning, grammar, constraints

on use, collocations, inflections and derived forms of partly known

words.

Confirming the spelling, pronunciation, meaning etc. of known words.

Checking that a word actually exists

Finding a different word to use instead of a known one (a

synonym)

Correcting errors and mistakes

Since this website is dedicated to academic writing, it will make sense to take a closer look at the process involved in production (encoding) of written language and the dictionary use typically needed in this process.

What information can be found in a dictionary?

Whatever type of dictionary you use, it is worthwhile spending some time with the user’s guide, i.e. the initial pages that explain what kind of information is provided in the dictionary, the layout of the entries, and often also a legend that explains what the symbols used in the dictionary mean.

In terms of what type of information is given in a typical entry, here is an example of what is normally found in a mono-lingual dictionary (here based on the structure in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE):

1. Spelling : the headword itself is given in its normal spelling, printed in bold. Headwords are arranged alphabetically in a dictionary.

2. Frequency information : symbols indicating how frequent the word is in spoken and written English. In LDOCE the symbols are boxes with either an’S’ (spoken) or a ‘W’ (written) followed by a number. For example, a box saying W2 means that the headword in question belongs to the second thousand most common words in written English.

3. Pronunciation : phonetic script, given within parentheses ( ) or slash / / brackets, tells us how to pronounce the word (the pronunciation of the word is transcribed following the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)).

4. Word class : the word class (also called part-of-speech) of the word and other grammatical information is provided following conventional abbreviations, such as n for Noun and v for Verb.

5. Sense(s) : when a word has more than one meaning, then the different senses are numbered. When a sense or a group of senses belong to a different word class, this is indicated. For each sense, a definition is given which at the same time also functions as an explanation of its meaning.

6. Collocations, phrasal use and the syntactic operation of the word : examples are given of how the headword may be combined with other words to form idiomatic language