Word order
Dictionaries of alphabetic languages list words in alphabetical order. With non-alphabetic languages, it may be different. The order in a dictionary with ideographic entries such as Chinese character is often troublesome and controversial because each character has different readings. Collation systems for logographs do exist. In Japanese and Korean, words containing Chinese characters (called Kanji in Japanese and Hanja in Korean) can be spelled in Hiragana and Hangeul respectively, and so are inserted in their proper alphabetical order in dictionaries, alongside words not derived from Chinese characters. Furthermore, in entries for words derived from characters, the main entry words are spelled in Hiragana (for Japanese dictionaries) and Hangeul (for Korean dictionaries), with the Chinese characters inserted in parentheses after each entry word.
Most modern dictionaries are descriptive, although many, such as the American Heritage dictionaries make extensive efforts to provide information on the best usage, and almost all dictionaries provide some information on words considered erroneous, vulgar, or easily confused. In any case, in the long run, usage alone determines the meaning of words, although dictionaries provide conservative continuity, even the most descriptive.
Dictionaries also differ in the degree to which they are encyclopedic, providing considerable background information, illustrations, and the like, or linguistic, concentrating on etymology, nuances of meaning, and quotations demonstrating usage.
Noah Webster's dictionary was published by the G&C Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts which still publishes Merriam-Webster dictionaries, but the term Webster's is considered generic and can be used by any dictionary.
The DICT protocol is a client/server model for dictionaries. Many free dictionaries are appearing in the dict format.
Special-purpose dictionaries
There are different types of dictionaries, including bilingual, multilingual, historical, biographical, and geographical dictionaries.Bilingual dictionaries
In bilingual dictionaries, each entry has translations of words in other language. For example, in a Japanese-English dictionary, the entry tsuki has the corresponding English word, moon. In dictionaries between a language using a non-Roman script and English, entry words in the non-English language may either be printed and sorted in the native order, or romanized and sorted in Roman alphabetical order.Character dictionaries
In East-Asian languages, a dictionary specialized in Han (Chinese) characters has developed, called Kan-wa jiten (lit Han-Japanese dictionary) in Japanese and Okpyeon (literally, "Jewel Book") in Korean. Each entry has one Chinese character with the description about strokess, reading and a list of words using that character.Glossaries
Another variant is the glossary, an alphabetical list of defined terms in a specialized 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.Variations between dictionaries
Prescription and Description
Dictionaries come in two basic philosophies, prescriptive and descriptive. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is descriptive, and attempts to describe actual usage. Noah Webster, on the other hand, who was intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language changed the meanings and pronunciation of numerous words. This is the reason that American English spells the word for the levels of red, yellow and blue (or red, green and blue depending on type being used), that an object or image posesses or displays, as color while British English spells the word used to describe this as colour.Other variations
Since words and their meanings develop over time, dictionary entries are organized to reflect these changes. Dictionaries may either list meanings in the historical order in which they appeared, or may list meanings in order of popularity and most common use. History
The art and craft of writing dictionaries is called lexicography. The first large English dictionary was Thomas Blount's of 1656. This was followed by Samuel Johnson's famous and more comprehensive dictionary of 1755.Miscellanea
The Irish mathematical physicist, J. L. Synge, created a game, Game of Circ, to emphasize the circular reasoning implicit in the defining process of any standard dictionary.List of major dictionaries
English
Japanese
Publishers
List of online dictionaries
List of 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".
Other collaborative dictionary projects:
See also: DICT, the dictionary server protocolFurther reading
Related articles