A conceptual dictionary (also ideographic or ideological dictionary) is a

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

that groups

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

s by

concept A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, ...

semantic relation Contemporary ontologies share many structural similarities, regardless of the ontology language in which they are expressed. Most ontologies describe individuals (instances), classes (concepts), attributes, and relations. List Common componen ...

instead of arranging them in

alphabetical order Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is ...

. Examples of conceptual dictionaries are picture dictionaries,

thesauri A thesaurus (: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar me ...

, and visual dictionaries. Onelook.com and ''Diccionario Ideológico de la Lengua Española'' (for Spanish)Casares Sánchez, Julio (ed.), ''Diccionario Ideológico de la Lengua Española'', Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1943. are specific online and print examples. This is sometimes called a reverse dictionary because it organized by concepts, phrases, or the

definition A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...

s rather than

headword In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (: lemmas or lemmata) is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' are forms of the s ...

s. This is similar to a

thesaurus A thesaurus (: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar me ...

, where one can look up a concept by some common, general word, and then find a list of near-

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...

s of that word. (For example, in a thesaurus one could look up "doctor" and be presented with such words as healer, physician, surgeon, M.D., medical man, medicine man, academic, professor, scholar, sage, master, expert.) In theory, a reverse dictionary might go further than this, allowing you to find a word by its definition only (for example, to find the word "doctor" knowing only that he is a "person who cures disease"). Such dictionaries have become more practical with the advent of

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

ized information-storage and retrieval systems (i.e. computer databases). An example of this type of reverse dictionary is the ''Diccionario Ideológico de la Lengua Española'' (Spanish Language Ideological Dictionary). This allows the user to find words based on a small set of general concepts.

Examples

(English) * Bernstein, Theodore, ''Bernstein's Reverse Dictionary'', Crown, New York, 1975. * Edmonds, David (ed.), ''The Oxford Reverse Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999. * Kahn, John, ''Reader's Digest Reverse Dictionary'', Reader's Digest, London, 1989. * https://web.archive.org/web/20180125074625/https://tradisho.com/ Concept based dictionary for the 170+ languages in the Philippines
Onelook Reverse Dictionary

ReverseDictionary.org

References

Dictionaries by type {{dictionary-stub