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dictionary, reference book that lists words in order—usually, for Western languages, alphabetical —and gives their meanings. In addition to its basic function of defining words, a dictionary may provide information about their pronunciation, grammatical forms and functions, etymologies, syntactic peculiarities, variant spellings, and antonyms.
- Allen Walker Read
Its most general functions are the following: The dictionary provides information on parts and aspects of the lexicon of one language. This is a monolingual dictionary. The dictionary provides help in translating between languages. This is a pluri- (mostly, a bi-)lingual dictionary. On the other hand, the functions of a dictionary may be ...
Examples and Observations. 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.
Often a word, or sense of a word, will be followed by a usage label (written in italics). These labels are designed to give the user of the dictionary some additional information about the word. Here is a list of our usage labels, and what each one means. Obsolete: this means that there no evidence of a word’s use since 1755.
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Dictionary - Features and problems: The goal of the big dictionaries is to make a complete inventory of a language, recording every word that can be found. The obsolete and archaic words must be included from the earlier stages of the language and even the words attested to only once (nonce words). In a language with a large literature, many “uncollected words” are likely to remain ...
FUNCTION definition: 1. the natural purpose (of something) or the duty (of a person): 2. an official ceremony or a…. Learn more.
DICTIONARY definition: 1. a book that contains a list of words in alphabetical order and explains their meanings, or gives…. Learn more.
