DICTIONARY, is merely the English form of dictionariura, a word not to be found in classical Latin. though of frequent use in that called monkish or medheval. A D. is, as every one knows, a book, but, in the widest sense of the word, its contents admit of no more strict definition than that they are are inged according to the order of the alpha bet, and that every word within the scope professed to be embraced by the D. must have its proper place accordingly. It may be further said that the D., in order to distinguish it from a mere list or index, must contain explanations or information about each word thus included within its scope, except in eases, of which many examples may be found in the present work, where it is sufficient to refer for a part or the whole of the account of one word to what is said under some other word. There are several other terms that are used synonymously, or nearly so, with dictionary. The Greek word lexicon is in common use for a D. of languages. It is not entirely so limited, however, in prac tice, as may be seen in such works as the Lexicon Juridical?: of Cal•inus or Kahl, which is just a I). of Roman and feudal law, of the same kind as sir Edward Tomlin's Lao Dictionary is of English law. The word eneyeloptedia has generally a wider meaning; but there are often several books exactly of the same kind, of which some are called dictionaries, and others encycloptedias. Glossary and vocabulary are nearly synonymous with a D. of a language; and the words thesaurus, catalogue, directory, gazetteer, and index. are sometimes used as a title when D. might be not inapplicable.
Dictionaries In:1y- he divided into two classes—(1) dictionaries whose object is to explain words and phrases; and (2) those that aim at giving information about things.
1. Dictionaries of language are, again, divided into various subclasses or species. The most common kind—what, indeith is undemtocid by the term D. (and the equiva lent Greek term lexicon) when used by itself—is an alphabetical list of the words com posing any language, either explained in the same language, or interpreted by the corresponding words of one or more other languages. To indicate that all, or nearly all, the words of the language are embraced, the name thesaurus (treasury) is sometimes used. Special dictionaries contain only the words used by single authors, or classes of authors. A glossary is a D. of unusual terms. An etymological D. is one in which the derivation of words is the sole or a prominent object.
2. Dictionaries of things (Ger. realwOrterbacher), or of information, are also of various kinds. When the whole field of human knowledge is embraced, we have an alphabetical encyclopa2dia. The name encycloptedia or cyclopedia is solnetimes given to diction aries of special departments of knowledge, as the Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology; but in all such cases, D. seems the correcter term. See ENCYCLOFEDIA.
There is no kind of information, within wide or narrow bounds, that may not be thrown into the D. form.. Dictionaries of apt quotations from the classics, the Scriptures, or the fathers, were much in vogue in the 17th century. There are dictionaries of biography, of geography, of dates, of architecture, of cookery, of political economy, of fortification—in fact, of every object of human knowledge and practice. As diction aries of this class are of the same nature, except as to the restriction of their field, as encyclopaedias properly so called, we reserve some notice of the more important of them for that head.
Dictionaries of language, in our sense of the word, are of modern origin. The Greeks and Romans had no idea of a book embracing all the words of their own or any foreign tongue. Glossaries, however, of unusual words and phrases were early current. The earliest work of the kind extant (though much interpolated) is the Homeric lexicon (Gr. Lexeis Hoinerikai, words") of Apollonius, an Alexandrine grammarian of the time of Augustus. More extensive compilations, such as the lexicon of Suidas (q.v.), and the Etymologicum, Magnum (q.v.), were made in the middle ages. A real D. became first possible after the invention of printing. A broad and sure basis for Greek lexicog raphy was laid by Henry Stephens (q.v.) in his Thesaurus (1572); the Latin Thesaurus of Robert Stephens, which did the same for Latin, had appeared in 1531. Previously to the discovery of printing, and for some time after, the explanations of Latin words were given in Latin. " The earliest printed vocabulary with which we are acquainted in which the words of any modern language answering to the Latin are inserted, is the Promptorius Puerorum, published by Pynson in 1499, in which English words are fol lowed by their supposed Latin equivalents" (Quarterly Review, Sept., 1855). Some of the more important dictionaries will be noticed under the beads of the several lan guages.