Dictionary

An excerpt from a dictionary:
fact (fakt) – noun
1. A thing that is known or proven to be true.

Dictionaries are typically a collection or book of words that usually give the definition, pronunciation, etymologies and/or phonetics of words.
Dictionaries are often dedicated to one or two particular languages of words and are generally alphabetically arranged.
The oldest dictionaries known to have existed were on stone tablets from the Semitic empire, around 2300 BC, which were discovered in Syria, West Asia, and were lists of words in both Akkadian and Sumerian languages.
The term ‘dictionary’ came from the word ‘dictionarius’ with the Latin meaning ‘of words’, which is believed to have been invented in 1220 by John of Garland (also known as Johannes de Garlandia), and English philologist.
The first reliable and significantly influential dictionary in English was called ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ and also known as ‘Johnson’s Dictionary’, by writer Samuel Johnson of Great Britain, in 1755, who took nine years to complete the task single-handedly.

It wasn’t until 1884 that the next great dictionary was written and released in sections, known as the ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ by Oxford University Press, which took until 1928 to be completed, and was then published in 12 volumes, that continues to be updated every three months, and is still considered to be the most comprehensive source on words in English.
Dictionaries are traditionally printed in book form but more recently are available digitally and via the internet.
There are two main types of dictionaries, specialised and defining, with the first a dictionary of technical words and the latter of simple, generally used words.
‘Dictionaries’ are also known as ‘lexicons’, and ‘lexicography’ is the activity of compiling or writing a dictionary.
Comprehensive dictionaries generally contain all or most words in use in the language, however, most printed forms of a dictionary contain only the most generally used words to keep the book size and cost manageable, as comprehensive ones like the Oxford English Dictionary contain over 21, pages.

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