This is a comparison of English dictionaries, which are
dictionaries
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 ...
about the
English language
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
. The dictionaries listed here are categorized into "full-size" dictionaries (which extensively cover the language, and are targeted to native speakers), "collegiate" (which are smaller, and often contain other biographical or geographical information useful to college students), and "learner's" (which are even smaller, targeted to English language learners, and which all use the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
to indicate pronunciation).
Full-size
These dictionaries generally aim for extensive coverage of the language for native speakers. They typically only cover one variety of English.
Collegiate
These dictionaries generally contain fewer entries (and fewer definitions per entry) than their full-size counterparts but may contain additional material, such as biographical or geopolitical information, that would be useful to a college student. They may be revised more often and thus contain more up to date usage. Sometimes the term ''collegiate'' or ''college'' is used merely to indicate a physically smaller, more economically printed dictionary.
Learner's
These dictionaries generally contain fewer entries than full-size or collegiate dictionaries but contain additional information that would be useful to a learner of English, such as more extensive usage notes, example sentences or phrases,
collocation
In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words t ...
s, and both British and American pronunciations (sometimes multiple variants of the latter). In addition, definitions are usually restricted to a simpler core vocabulary than that expected of a native speaker. All use the
IPA to indicate pronunciation.
See also
*
List of Canadian English dictionaries
List of Canadian English dictionary, dictionaries:
* ''Canadian Oxford Dictionary''
* ''Collins Canadian Dictionary''
* ''A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles''
* ''Gage Canadian Dictionary''
* ''Houghton Mifflin Canadian Dict ...
*
List of dictionaries by number of words
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Comparison Of English Dictionaries
English dictionaries
English dictionaries
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Culture, language and peoples
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
* ''English'', an Amish ter ...