13.1 The Development of the Dictionary 

Early Glossaries and Word Books

Modern English Dictionaries

American Dictionaries

13.2 Types of Dictionaries

1. Monolingual and Bilingual Dictionaries

2. Linguistic and Encyclopedic Dictionaries

– Linguistic Dictionaries

Linguistic dictionaries aim at defining words and explaining their usages in the language. 

Cover information about spelling, pronunciation, meaning, grammatical function, usage and etymology

3. Encyclopedic Dictionaries

– Encyclopedia: 

Concerns not about the language per se but about provide encyclopedic information related to each headword.

– Encyclopedic dictionaries

Dual in nature and share the characteristics of both linguistic dictionaries and encyclopedia.

4. General Purpose Dictionaries

Complied for general use

Unabridged Dictionaries

– A complete record of all the words in use.

–   Provides a great quantity of basic information about a word: origin, meaning, ancestry, pronunciation, cognates, usage, grammatical function, spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, derived forms, synonyms, homonyms. At least 200 000 headwords

Desk Dictionaries    Medium-sized with 50 000 to 150 000 headwords

Pocket Dictionaries   –  50 000 entry or fewer abridgement of reputable desk dictionaries at best and little more than spelling lists with scanty, often inaccurate definitions at worst

Electronic Dictionaries    Convenient as it is, they do the word of a pocket dictionary at its best. They are far less helpful than a traditional desk dictionary.

5. Specialized dictionaries

Etymological Dictionaries

Dictionaries of Usages

Dictionaries of Idioms

Dictionaries of Synonyms

Dictionaries of Slang

Other Specialized Dictionaries