2015-08-21
935
Non-linguistic dictionaries are the ones that give information on all branches of knowledge. They are called encyclopedias. Encyclopedic dictionaries provide descriptions of the notions designated by words, focus on the meaning, but give no linguistic information about the word. The best known are: The Encyclopedia Britannica, theEncyclopedia Americana.
Linguistic dictionaries focus on the linguistic information related to the word and briefly outline the respective notions or word meanings.
The entry of a linguistic dictionary. The entry of a linguistic dictionary is the information about a word. The components of the entry are:
(1) word, its spelling and pronunciation (transcription)
(2) grammatical characteristics – part of speech, particular word-forms, e.g. specific tense forms for the verb
(3) meanings
(4) stylistic notations if it doesn’t belong to the basic stock or to the neutral vocabulary
(5) examples
(6) set phrases and idioms
Thesaurus contains lists of associated, undefined words (such as synonyms and sometimes antonyms) arranged thematically. Although including synonyms, a thesaurus should not be taken as a complete list of all the synonyms for a particular word. The entries are also designed for drawing distinctions between similar words and assisting in choosing exactly the right word.
The word "thesaurus" is derived from 16th-century New Latin, in turn from Latin thēsaurus, literally "treasure store", generally meaning a collection of things which are of big importance or value (and thus the medieval rank of thesaurer was a synonym for treasurer). This meaning has been largely supplanted by Roget's usage of the term. The most popular is Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus was first published in 1852. Roget’s intention was not to define or discriminate the words but to arrange them into synonymous and antonymous groups.
A page from Roget's Thesaurus (1999)
