Other forms: glossaries
A glossary is the alphabetical list of hard words and their meanings at the back of a book. Check the glossary, a short glossary, add a glossary.
It exists so the text can use technical terms without stopping to define them, which is why a good one is short. A gloss was originally a note written between the lines of a manuscript explaining a difficult word. Note that the Greek glossa means a tongue or a language.
1nounglossaryAn alphabetical list of hard words and their meanings.
“Look up any difficult terms in the glossary at the back of the book.”
glossary is a word list.
Latin glossarium comes from glossa, from Greek glossa, a tongue or an obscure word. Gloss and polyglot come from the same tongue.
Ancient Greek
γλῶσσα — tongue
Latin
glossārium
Middle English
glosarie
English, today
glossary
From Middle English glosarie, from Latin glossārium, from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (“tongue”). a doublet of glossarium.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA