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A conceptual dictionary (also ideographic or ideological dictionary) is a
dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologie ...
that groups
word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...
s by
concept Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by ...
or semantic relation instead of arranging them in
alphabetical order Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is t ...
. Examples of conceptual dictionaries are picture dictionaries, thesauri, and visual dictionaries. Onelook.com and ''Diccionario Ideológico de la Lengua Española'' (for Spanish)Casares Sánchez, Julio (ed.), ''Diccionario Ideológico de la Lengua Española'', Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1943. are specific online and print examples. This is sometimes called a reverse dictionary because it organized by concepts, phrases, or the
definition A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definiti ...
s rather than
headword In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural ''lemmas'' or ''lemmata'') is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' ...
s. This is similar to a
thesaurus A thesaurus (plural ''thesauri'' or ''thesauruses'') or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea: Synonym dictionar ...
, where one can look up a concept by some common, general word, and then find a list of near-
synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are al ...
s of that word. (For example, in a thesaurus one could look up "doctor" and be presented with such words as healer, physician, surgeon, M.D., medical man, medicine man, academician, professor, scholar, sage, master, expert.) In theory, a reverse dictionary might go further than this, allowing you to find a word by its definition only (for example, to find the word "doctor" knowing only that he is a "person who cures disease"). Such dictionaries have become more practical with the advent of
computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
ized information-storage and retrieval systems (i.e. computer databases). An example of this type of reverse dictionary is the ''Diccionario Ideológico de la Lengua Española'' (Spanish Language Ideological Dictionary). This allows the user to find words based on a small set of general concepts.


Examples

(English) * Bernstein, Theodore, ''Bernstein's Reverse Dictionary'', Crown, New York, 1975. * Edmonds, David (ed.), ''The Oxford Reverse Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999. * Kahn, John, ''Reader's Digest Reverse Dictionary'', Reader's Digest, London, 1989. * https://web.archive.org/web/20180125074625/https://tradisho.com/ Concept based dictionary for the 170+ languages in the Philippines
Onelook Reverse Dictionary

ReverseDictionary.org


References

Dictionaries by type {{dictionary-stub