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Nathan Bailey's definition of “oats” Dictionary page showing Samuel Johnson's 1755 definition of oats, including the remark that in England oats are fed to horses but in Scotland they support the people, with literary quotations. parade float to promote Webster's International Dictionary entry for the word harlequin from the ninth edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Learn about the history of the dictionary, from Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language to the Oxford English Dictionary
dictionary
At a Glance
An open English dictionary from the United Kingdom shows densely printed word entries in three columns per page, with thumb index tabs visible on the right.
dictionary summary
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Challenging Standardized Test Words Quiz Vol. 3
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12-Letter Words Quiz
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13-Letter Word Quiz
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Nathan Bailey's definition of “oats”
Nathan Bailey's definition of “oats” A detail of Nathan Bailey's definition of the word oats (1736).

dictionary

reference work
Also known as: lexicon
Written by
Allen Walker Read
Emeritus Professor of English, Columbia University. Author of "Approaches to Lexicography and Semantics" in Current Trends in Linguistics.
Allen Walker Read
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
History

dictionary, reference book that lists words in order—usually, for Western languages, alphabetical—and gives their meanings. In addition to its basic function of defining words, a dictionary may provide information about their pronunciation, grammatical forms and functions, etymologies, syntactic peculiarities, variant spellings, and antonyms. A dictionary may also provide quotations illustrating a word’s use, and these may be dated to show the earliest known uses of the word in specified senses. The word dictionary comes from...

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