|
|
Dictionaries |
There are dictionaries of many varieties, published by many different publishers, and now in several formats. They include abridged and unabridged dictionaries, thesauri, current usage dictionaries, acronym and abbreviations dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, etymological dictionaries, dictionaries of colloquialisms and slang, translating dictionaries, and foreign language dictionaries. The Ithaca College Library maintains many dictionaries in its reference collection, but there are also many, either freely available or subscription based, located online.
If a dictionary is published by a reliable publisher, you can expect that the words will be spelled right and the definitions will be accurate. One of the biggest differences in dictionaries is the number of words found in them. Unabridged dictionaries typically contain 300,000 or more words and many more definitions for each word. Most abridged dictionaries are well under 200,000 words, often closer to 100,000.
The Oxford English Dictionary, more commonly known as the OED, is one dictionary that stands out for special mention as a major resource of a library. It is a monumental work representing over a century's work. Its primary focus, from its inception, has been to keep track of the history of the English language. When the second edition came out in 1989, it was 20 volumes long and defined more than half a million words. It includes words long obsolete or unused, and it documents with quotations how the meanings of words have changed since they first appeared in writing (whether the word first appeared in 800 or 1984).
With the advance of technology, the third edition of the OED is available online, and there are no plans to bring out a new edition in paper. The "publishing" of the OED has forever changed. Its compilers once waited several decades to update the work. They had to wait until Queen Victoria died to add certain words that they feared she would not approve of. Now each quarter of the year, a batch of new and revised entries is added to the New Edition.