A dictionary is a collection of words in a specific language, with definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon.
According to Nielsen 2008 a dictionary may be regarded as a lexicographical product that is characterised by three significant features it has been prepared for one or more functions
it contains data that have been selected for the purpose of fulfilling those functions
its lexicographic structures link and establish relationships between the data so that they can meet the needs of users and fulfil the functions of the dictionary.
Dictionaries are most commonly found in the form of a book, but some newer dictionaries, like New Oxford American Dictionary are dictionary software running on PDA or computers. There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.
The oldest known dictionaries were Akkadian empire cuneiform tablets with bilingual Sumerian Akkadian wordlists, discovered in Ebla. The early 2nd millennium BCE Urra hubullu glossary is the canonical Babylonian version of such bilingual Sumerian wordlists.
A Chinese dictionary, the ca. 3rd century BCE Erya, was the earliest surviving monolingual dictionary, although some sources cite the ca. 800 BCE Shizhoupian as a dictionary, modern scholarship considers it a calligraphic compendium of Chinese characters from Zhou dynasty bronzes.
Philitas of Cos wrote a pioneering vocabulary Disorderly Words which explained the meanings of rare Homeric and other literary words, words from local dialects, and technical terms. Apollonius the Sophist wrote the oldest surviving Homeric lexicon.
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