Glossary

How to spell glossary

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce glossary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does glossary mean?

1. nounAn alphabetical list of specialised or difficult terms with explanations, usually placed at the back of a book.

Glossary in a sentence

• The textbook includes a glossary of legal terms at the back.

• She checked the glossary whenever she met an unfamiliar word in the manual.

Where does glossary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Greek glossa, which literally meant 'tongue' and by extension 'a language' or 'a word that needs explaining'. Scholars writing in Greek and later Latin used glossa for an unusual or foreign term jotted in the margin, then added an explanation beside it; these explanatory notes were themselves called glosses. Latin gathered such notes into a glossarium, a collection of difficult words with their meanings. English took the term in the late Middle Ages, by way of Latin, to name an alphabetical list of specialised or hard terms appended to a book. The same glossa root still lurks in 'gloss' (a marginal note) and in the medical 'glossitis', an inflammation of the tongue, which helps explain why the spelling keeps the double s before the -ary ending.

How the word is built

• gloss (from Greek glossa: tongue, language, hence a word needing explanation)
• -ary (suffix: a collection or place for)