English dictionary

American  

[ing-glish dik-shuh-ner-ee, ing-lish] / ˈɪŋ glɪʃ ˈdɪk ʃəˌnɛr i, ˈɪŋ lɪʃ /

noun

English dictionaries plural

1. a dictionary in which most of the entry words and all of their definitions, as well as supplementary material, are in English; a monolingual English dictionary, such as Dictionary.com. Terms from other languages that are commonly used by speakers of English are given language labels and often the foreign as well as Anglicized pronunciations.

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Other Word Forms

Inflected Forms

noun

• English dictionaries
  plural

Etymology

Origin of English dictionary

First recorded in 1720–30

Example Sentences

"This word is very old school and it's time to abolish the R-word out of the English dictionary."

From BBC • Jul. 7, 2023

He said his group developed software to help speed the process by removing all words that were not in an English dictionary, though he acknowledged it was not perfect.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 17, 2020

Macquarie Dictionary, an Australian English dictionary, had also chosen “cancel culture” for its Word of the Year after holding a vote for the public.

From Fox News • Dec. 2, 2019

The sequence of words is meaningless: a random array strung together by an algorithm let loose in an English dictionary.

From New York Times • Jan. 16, 2018

He wrote "Lives of the Poets," poems, and probably the most remarkable work of the kind ever produced by a single person, an English dictionary.

From Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Turpin, Edna Henry Lee