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A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc.Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 2002 It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types.A Practical Guide to Lexicography, Sterkenburg 2003, pp. 155–157 There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms ( thesauri), and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary.A Practical Guide to Lexicography, Sterkenburg 2003, pp. 3–4

There is also a contrast between ''prescriptive'' or ''descriptive'' dictionaries; the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications (e.g. "informal" or "vulgar") in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive.

The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times around 2300 BCE, in the form of bilingual dictionaries, and the oldest surviving monolingual dictionaries are Chinese dictionaries 3rd century BCE. The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was ''A Table Alphabeticall'', written in 1604, and monolingual dictionaries in other languages also began appearing in Europe at around this time. The systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest arose as a 20th-century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta. The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, with the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of having an "astonishing" lack of method and critical-self reflection.

History

The oldest known dictionaries were cuneiform tablets with bilingual Sumerian– Akkadian wordlists, discovered in Ebla (modern Syria) and dated to roughly 2300 BCE, the time of the Akkadian Empire. The early 2nd millennium BCE ''Urra=hubullu'' glossary is the canonical Babylonian version of such bilingual Sumerian wordlists. A Chinese dictionary, the c. 3rd century BCE ''Erya'', is the earliest surviving monolingual dictionary; and some sources cite the '' Shizhoupian'' (probably compiled sometime between 700 BCE to 200 BCE, possibly earlier) as a "dictionary", although modern scholarship considers it a calligraphic compendium of Chinese characters from Zhou dynasty bronzes. Philitas of Cos (fl. 4th century BCE) wrote a pioneering vocabulary ''Disorderly Words'' (Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι, ') which explained the meanings of rare Homeric and other literary words, words from local dialects, and technical terms. Apollonius the Sophist (fl. 1st century CE) wrote the oldest surviving Homeric lexicon. The first Sanskrit dictionary, the Amarakośa, was written by Amarasimha c. 4th century CE. Written in verse, it listed around 10,000 words. According to the '' Nihon Shoki'', the first Japanese dictionary was the long-lost 682 CE ''Niina'' glossary of Chinese characters. The oldest existing Japanese dictionary, the c. 835 CE '' Tenrei Banshō Meigi'', was also a glossary of written Chinese. In ''Frahang-i Pahlavig'', Aramaic heterograms are listed together with their translation in the Middle Persian language and phonetic transcription in the Pazend alphabet. A 9th-century CE Irish dictionary, Sanas Cormaic, contained etymologies and explanations of over 1,400 Irish words. In the 12th century, The Karakhanid-Turkic scholar Mahmud Kashgari finished his work "Divan-u Lügat'it Türk", a dictionary about the Turkic dialects, but especially Karakhanid Turkic. His work contains about 7500 to 8000 words and it was written to teach non Turkic Muslims, especially the Abbasid Arabs, the Turkic language. Al-Zamakhshari wrote a small Arabic dictionary called "Muḳaddimetü'l-edeb" for the Turkic-Khwarazm ruler Atsiz. In the 14th century, the Codex Cumanicus was finished and it served as a dictionary about the Cuman-Turkic language. While in Mamluk Egypt, Ebû Hayyân el-Endelüsî finished his work "Kitâbü'l-İdrâk li-lisâni'l-Etrâk", a dictionary about the Kipchak and Turcoman languages spoken in Egypt and the Levant. A dictionary called "Bahşayiş Lügati", which is written in old Anatolian Turkish, served also as a dictionary between Oghuz Turkish, Arabic and Persian. But it is not clear who wrote the dictionary or in which century exactly it was published. It was written in old Anatolian Turkish from the Seljuk period and not the late medieval Ottoman period. In India around 1320, Amir Khusro compiled the Khaliq-e-bari, which mainly dealt with Hindustani and Persian words.

Arabic dictionaries were compiled between the 8th and 14th centuries CE, organizing words in rhyme order (by the last syllable), by alphabetical order of the radicals, or according to the alphabetical order of the first letter (the system used in modern European language dictionaries). The modern system was mainly used in specialist dictionaries, such as those of terms from the Qur'an and hadith, while most general use dictionaries, such as the ''Lisan al-`Arab'' (13th century, still the best-known large-scale dictionary of Arabic) and ''al-Qamus al-Muhit'' (14th century) listed words in the alphabetical order of the radicals. The ''Qamus al-Muhit'' is the first handy dictionary in Arabic, which includes only words and their definitions, eliminating the supporting examples used in such dictionaries as the ''Lisan'' and the '' Oxford English Dictionary''.

In medieval Europe, glossaries with equivalents for Latin words in vernacular or simpler Latin were in use (e.g. the Leiden Glossary). The '' Catholicon'' (1287) by Johannes Balbus, a large grammatical work with an alphabetical lexicon, was widely adopted. It served as the basis for several bilingual dictionaries and was one of the earliest books (in 1460) to be printed. In 1502 Ambrogio Calepino's ''Dictionarium'' was published, originally a monolingual Latin dictionary, which over the course of the 16th century was enlarged to become a multilingual glossary. In 1532 Robert Estienne published the ''Thesaurus linguae latinae'' and in 1572 his son Henri Estienne published the '' Thesaurus linguae graecae'', which served up to the 19th century as the basis of Greek lexicography. The first monolingual Spanish dictionary written was Sebastián Covarrubias's '' Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española'', published in 1611 in Madrid, Spain. In 1612 the first edition of the '' Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca'', for Italian, was published. It served as the model for similar works in French and English. In 1690 in Rotterdam was published, posthumously, the ''Dictionnaire Universel'' by Antoine Furetière for French. In 1694 appeared the first edition of the '' Dictionnaire de l'Académie française'' (still published, with the ninth edition not complete ). Between 1712 and 1721 was published the ''Vocabulario portughez e latino'' written by Raphael Bluteau. The Real Academia Española published the first edition of the '' Diccionario de la lengua española'' (still published, with a new edition about every decade) in 1780; their ''Diccionario de Autoridades'', which included quotes taken from literary works, was published in 1726. The ''Totius Latinitatis lexicon'' by Egidio Forcellini was firstly published in 1777; it has formed the basis of all similar works that have since been published.

The first edition of ''A Greek-English Lexicon'' by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott appeared in 1843; this work remained the basic dictionary of Greek until the end of the 20th century. And in 1858 was published the first volume of the Deutsches Wörterbuch

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