Dictionary Terminology
April 15, 2005.Ask different people to list the basic terminology used by dictionaries and they will answer the question easily, including such responses as “definitions”, “thesaurus” or “synonyms of words”.
Using the same dictionary, ask the same people if they know how to find “hypernyms”, “homonyms”or “hyponyms” for a word and most of them would not have any idea what you are talking about.
This article presents an overview of the advanced terms used by dictionaries. Whether you need to look up a quick definition or are doing an in-depth analysis of a word for your next crossword puzzle, a good dictionary can provide a lot more than just standard definitions.
Most English dictionaries consist of a long list of terms in alphabetical or predetermined phonetic order. The words, and their definitions, include the following information:
- Definition Category: A word can be a noun, a verb, an adverb or an adjective. In the English language, nouns represent the largest category, representing some 60% of all words. Depending on the dictionary, additional categories, such as pronouns or interjections, may also be presented.
- Spelling: One or more fields are usually available to help you with the conventional spelling of a word. Spelling is considered to be a basic element of orthography and grammar.
- Pronunciation: One or more fields are also available indicating the most common way a word is normally spoken. Pronunciation is a controversial source of information because of the different way in which the same word can be pronounced, depending on where you live, your education, and your social class. Even the most prestigious dictionaries cannot agree on the correct pronunciation of some words.
- Synonyms: Two words are considered to be synonyms when they have identical meanings or their meaning is such that the terms can be readily interchangeable. Synonyms should always be considered in a particular context because, at times, two synonyms may not be interchangeable, depending on the context. This dictionary provides one of the most advanced synonym search engines on the net.
- Antonyms: Antonym words are the exact opposite of synonym words because they have opposite meanings. Here too, it is important to consider the context of what is being said in order to determine whether or not two particular antonyms can be used interchangeably. The word “antonym” is commonly misspelled as “anthonym”.
- Hypernyms: A word is a hypernym of another word if it is more generic than the original word. “Plant”, for example, is an hypernym for “flower” because it is a more generic term. Another way to look at hypernyms is to remember that they always represent a broader term than its related word.
- Hyponyms: Hypnonyms are the exact opposite of hypernyms. The hyponym of a word is less generic or more precise than its related word. For example, “a rose'' is an hyponym of “a flower”. Most people use hypernyms and hyponyms more often than they think. Crossword puzzles, for example, use hypernyms and hyponyms very frequently. In fact, most of the words in crossword puzzles are usually hyponyms. The thesaurus of this dictionary include hyponyms and hypernyms (when applicable).
- Homonyms: Some dictionaries also include homonym information. Two words are homonyms when they have different meanings but are pronounced the same way such as, for example, buy (to purchase) and bye (farewell).
Our dictionary, unlike many others, contains hundreds of thousands of words that are easily described and classified using the terms above. In comparison, a Chinese dictionary comprises more than a million entries, which are not only not sorted in alphabetical order but are described with 17 dimensions, based on the numerous schemes of the components, shape and number of strokes of each character...
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