A specialized 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 covers a relatively restricted set of phenomena. The definitive book on the subject (Cowie 2009) includes chapters on some of the dictionaries included below: *

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 *pronunciations *names (place names and personal names) *phrases and

idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language ...

s *dialect terms *slang *quotations *

etymologies Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words a ...

* rhymes *

lyrics Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a " libretto" and their writer, ...

Dictionaries of idioms and slang are common in most cultures. Examples include (of French) the ''Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions'', edited by

Alain Rey Alain Rey (; – )
...

(Paris: Le Robert 2006), and (of English)

Eric Partridge Eric Honeywood Partridge (6 February 1894 – 1 June 1979) was a New Zealand– British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang. His writing career was interrupted only by his service in the Army Education Corps an ...

's ''Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English'' (8th edition, London: Routledge 2002). In the area of

language learning Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences t ...

, there are specialized dictionaries for aspects of language which tend to be ordinary for

mother-tongue A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

speakers but may cause difficulty for learners. These include dictionaries of

phrasal verb In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit composed of a verb followed by a particle (examples: ''turn down'', ''run into'' or ''sit up''), sometimes combined with a preposition (e ...

s, such as the ''Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary'' (2nd edition, Oxford University Press: 2006), and dictionaries of

collocation In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words ...

, such as ''Macmillan Collocations Dictionary'' (Oxford: Macmillan 2010). One of the most common types of specialized dictionary is what is often referred to in English as a technical dictionary and in German as a Fachwörterbuch.According to Tboystarkid These dictionaries cover the

terminology Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; the latter meaning is also known as terminology science. A ''term'' is a word, compound word, or multi-wo ...

of a particular subject field or discipline. As described in Nielsen (1994), dictionaries of this type can be classified in various ways. A dictionary that covers more than one subject field is called a multi-field dictionary; one that covers one subject field is called a

single-field dictionary A single-field dictionary is a specialized dictionary that has been designed and compiled to cover the terms of one particular subject field. Single-field dictionaries should be contrasted with multi-field dictionaries and sub-field dictionaries ...

; and one that covers a limited part of a subject field is called a

sub-field dictionary A sub-field dictionary is a specialized dictionary that has been designed and compiled to cover the terms of one (or possibly more) sub-fields of a particular subject field. It is therefore a sub-division of the class of dictionary called a singl ...

. A technical dictionary that attempts to cover as much of the relevant terminology as possible is called a maximizing dictionary, whereas one that attempts to cover only a limited part of the relevant terminology is called a minimizing dictionary. Specialized dictionaries can have various functions, i.e. they can help users in different types of situation. Monolingual dictionaries can help users understand and produce texts, whereas bilingual dictionaries can help users understand texts, translate texts and produce texts, as described in e.g. Nielsen (1994) and Nielsen (2010).

See also

References

Further reading