Other forms: dictionaries
A dictionary is the big book that explains what every word means. Look it up in the dictionary, a pocket dictionary, the dictionary says.
Modern ones describe how words are actually used rather than ruling on how they should be, which is why new senses get in whether anybody likes them or not. The dictionary says is therefore weaker evidence than people think. Note that the Latin dictio means a saying.
1noundictionaryA book explaining what words mean.
“If you don't know what a word means, look it up in a dictionary.”
dictionary is a book.
Medieval Latin dictionarium comes from dictio, a saying or word, from dicere, to say. Diction comes from the same root.
Middle English
dixionare
English, today
dictionary
Built from
From Middle English dixionare. From Middle English dixionare, a learned borrowing from Medieval Latin dictiōnārium, from Latin dictiōnārius, from dictiō (“a speaking”), from dictus, perfect past participle of dīcō (“to speak”) + -ārium (“room, place”). by surface analysis, diction + -ary.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA