Dictionaries

How to spell dictionaries

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dictionaries

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dictionaries mean?

1. nounReference books or digital resources that list words alphabetically with their meanings, spellings, and pronunciations.

Dictionaries in a sentence

• The library keeps several dictionaries on the reference shelf for visitors to consult.

• Modern online dictionaries update their entries far more often than printed editions ever could.

Where does dictionaries come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb dicere, which meant 'to say' or 'to speak', and its related noun dictio, meaning 'a saying' or 'a word'. In Medieval Latin a dictionarium was literally a 'collection of words or sayings', the -arium ending marking a place where things are gathered, much as an aquarium gathers water creatures. English borrowed the singular 'dictionary' in the early 1500s, around the time printed reference books were spreading, and the plural simply follows the regular English rule of changing a final consonant-plus-y to -ies. The same dicere root sits inside a large family of everyday words, including 'dictate', 'predict', 'verdict', and 'contradict', all of which involve speaking or stating something. Knowing that the core is dict (to speak) helps fix the tricky middle of the spelling, since the 't' is sounded as the 'sh' of -tion, and the ending genuinely is -aries, not -arys.

How the word is built

• dict (from dicere: to say, to speak)
• -ion (noun-forming)
• -ary (place/collection)
• -ies (plural of words ending in -y)