dictionary
dictionary
/ˈdɪkʃənri/
(plural dictionaries)
1 a book or electronic resource that gives a list of the words of a language in alphabetical order and explains what they mean, or gives a word for them in a foreign language
a Spanish-English dictionary
a slang dictionary
a dictionary of slang
in a dictionary If you don't know the meaning of a word, look it up in the dictionary.
I couldn't find the word in the dictionary.
You need a dictionary to understand what he's saying half the time.
a way of teaching children how to use dictionaries
Collocations
adjective
verb + dictionary
look something up in…
dictionary + noun
preposition
in a/the dictionary
2 a book that explains the words that are used in a particular subject
a dictionary of mathematics
I decided to consult a medical dictionary.
3 a list of words in electronic form, for example stored in a computer’s spellchecker Word Origin
early 16th cent.: from medieval Latin dictionarium (manuale) or dictionarius (liber) ‘manual or book of words’, from Latin dictio, from dicere ‘to say’.