How to Use a Dictionary

Out of nearly a million English words, the average English speaker knows about 60,000 words. ^{[1] X Research Resources} In addition to helping with pronunciation and looking up the meaning of words, dictionaries are also the perfect tool to improve English skills through a wealth of information on grammar and usage words, however for that you must know how to use a dictionary.

Table of Contents

Learn about dictionaries

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Choose the right dictionary type. You should change your dictionary from time to time to keep up-to-date with new words that are added every year. ^{[2] X Research Source}

Consider purchasing a specialized dictionary if it is useful for study or work. Some examples of specialized dictionaries are language dictionaries, technical dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, crossword dictionaries, subject dictionaries (math, chemistry, biology etc.), picture dictionaries (great for learning foreign languages or learning about technical knowledge), a dictionary of slang and idioms, and more.
Note that many countries have their own native dictionaries, which are more effective than the ones you can find anywhere, such as Australian Macquarie, British Oxford, American Webster and so on. ..
Some high schools, universities, and businesses prefer a certain type of dictionary. That’s because they want students or staff to have a consistent way of understanding and using words, making sure everyone uses the right terms when doing assignments, editing, and reporting.

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Read the introduction. The best way to learn how to use a dictionary of some kind is to read the introduction, which explains how the entries are arranged. The introduction provides some important information such as abbreviations and phonetic alphabets used throughout the dictionary.

This section outlines the layout of the entries (they usually write down the vocabulary, its variations, the type of word, its pronunciation, its interpretation, etc.). After reading, you know how to look up the words you want to find and how to use the information you find.
There is also information on the pronunciation of words with similar spellings, useful for when you hear a word but don’t know how to spell it. For example, if you hear “not”, it could be the word “knot” with the “k” sound being silent, and that list gives you hints to find the right word.

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Learn acronyms. Dictionaries often use acronyms in the description of the word’s meaning. Therefore, sometimes you will be confused when you do not know these acronyms. Usually a list of acronyms is provided near the first pages, in the introduction or immediately after. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

For example, “adj” stands for “adjective” and tells you what kind of word you are looking up. Similarly, “adv” or “advb” corresponds to the two words “adverb; adverbial” (adverb).
For the notation “n” we have at least three cases: the most common is “noun” (noun), but can also be “neuter” (middle) or “north” (north), determined based on the context. So you need to know the context of using the word you need to look up.

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Learn the pronunciation guide. If you jump right into the word lookup without paying attention to the pronunciation guide, you may find it difficult to understand the symbols, so you need to learn what these symbols mean first. ^{[4] X Research Sources}

The pronunciation of a word is placed between two italic dashes ( ).
The single stress (‘) placed before the syllable is the main stress of the word, the double stress (“) before the syllable is the secondary stress of the word, the lighter sound of these two types of stress is not marked. , the word penmanship will be transliterated as ‘pen-m&n-“ship.
The symbol & indicates an unstressed vowel. This notation is often interspersed between an stressed vowel with either r or l, as in sour ‘sau(-&)r.
The symbol ä stands for the “a” sound that occurs in words like “caught” or “fought”. Compare this with the a symbol for the “a” sound in words like “mat, map, snap” and more. A word doesn’t have to have the letter “a” to have its pronunciation.

Word lookup

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Find the correct dictionary partition with the first character of the desired word. Dictionaries usually arrange words in alphabetical order. For example, the letter “dog” starting with “d” should be in the partition after the character “c” and before “e”.

Notice the spelling of confusing words like “gnome” starting with “g”, “psychpogy” starting with “p” or “knock” starting with “k” and so on.
If you know for sure what the first character is, you can start looking it up. However, if you can’t find this word, you should try looking for another part of the letter. For example, if you don’t know that the word “psychpogy” starts with “p”, you will first look for the letter “s”. After you can’t find it you should look in the “p” section as you can infer it from the words “psychic” and “psychosis”.
Remember that some words sound the same but are spelled very differently. For example, the words “throne” and “thrown” are written differently and have completely different meanings. So you have to be careful with the words you look up.

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Read the instructions. These are two letters at the top of the page that tell you what words are on that page. They help you determine exactly what to look for for the word you want to look up. ^{[5] X Research Sources}

For example, you would open the letter “B” if you were looking for the word “bramble”. While flipping you have to look up to the top of the page until you reach the page with the words “braid bread”. It tells you that there are words between the words braid and bread on the page. Since “bramble” starts with “bra” it will be in this section.
Dictionaries are always sorted alphabetically so bramble (bra) comes before bread (bre).

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Scan in order from top to bottom. If you’re looking for the word “futile” look alongside the words “furry”, “fuse” and “fuss”. Since the search word starts with “fut”, you have to glance at the words starting with “fur” and “fus” until you see an area with letters starting with “fut”. In this case you search from the top down, going through “fut”, “Futhark” and then the word “futile”.

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Read the description of the meaning. After finding the word position, you will see a description of its meaning (if there is more than one meaning, the most common meaning is recorded first), pronunciation, capitalization (if it is a proper noun) , word type and so on..

Another problem is that it is difficult for learners to fully understand the explanation, because there are words that you do not understand and continue to look up, but do not be discouraged. See if you can understand the example sentences provided, if not, look up the unknown words.
Sometimes dictionaries also provide synonyms (words that have the same meaning as the word you’re looking for) and antonyms (which mean the opposite of the word you’re looking for). For example, the word futile has several synonyms such as “fruitless” and “unsuccessful”, the antonym being “effective” or “helpful”. You also see relatives of this word like “futility”.
Many dictionaries also specify the origin or history leading to the appearance of the word. Whether you don’t know Latin or Ancient Greek, this information will help you remember and understand the word.
Many dictionaries also show spellings of other English variants (American English, British British, Australian British etc.).

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On the other hand, you can also use an online dictionary. Online dictionaries are quite easy to use, you just need to choose the free one that works for you, or use the paid version if your place of study or work has a subscription. You have to type the word you want to look up in the box, the search engine will return it with a description of its meaning and most of the ingredients mentioned above.

Take advantage of the audio content available in online dictionaries, which is useful when you don’t know the pronunciation of words.
To use Google to find the meaning of a word, type “futile means”. The search engine will figure out what the word means.
Keep in mind that free apps are not as exhaustive as paid apps or paper dictionaries, keep this in mind when you’re not sure you’ve found the right answer.

Use the dictionary’s extras

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The dictionary also provides standard letter templates. Usually paper dictionaries (not online apps) have some standard cover letter templates for job applications, replies, complaints or other formal documents.

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Find more information. Dictionaries not only contain vocabulary and word meanings, some also provide a wealth of information about the world in the form of lists. The most common is geographic information (like maps, countries, cities, capitals, etc.).

Paper dictionaries often have data on units of mass and volume, as well as conversion tables between the types of units. This function is quite convenient when you need to convert from pounds to kilograms and vice versa.
You also find population statistics for many cities and countries, as well as images of flags for countries, states, provinces and regions of the world.
Many dictionaries also include lists of famous people or historical figures for you to study.

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Have fun learning with the dictionary! Whenever you have free time, you can expand your knowledge by tinkering with the dictionary. You just need to randomly open a certain page and see if there are any strange or interesting words. Pay attention to the meanings of these words and try to add to your vocabulary, or use them later so that they are really ingrained and memorable.

Play a dictionary game with a group of friends. This game requires a dictionary and some friends. The first person looks up a difficult word and applies it to a sentence. The rest have to guess whether the word is correct or just a fabrication. If someone guesses correctly, it’s their turn to quiz.
Another game: Each person will choose a word that is familiar to everyone, then read aloud the meaning of that word printed in the dictionary. The rest had to try to guess what the word was, even shouting while its definition was still being read.
Game with foreign language dictionary. Pick an obscure word and ask people to think of its meaning and write it on a piece of paper, at the same time you also write the correct meaning on the paper, finally mix the pieces of paper and let them guess which “correct” meaning. “.

Advice

If you can’t find the word you want to look up, check if you’ve spelled it correctly. For example, you won’t find the word “isotope” if you look in the part of the letter A, which is likely when the speaker has a southern accent.
Don’t worry about learning the etymology of words. Most of our vocabulary is taken from Greek or Latin, you will find yourself learning quite a lot of words derived from these languages, but after studying the etymology you begin to understand new words more easily. by looking at their structure.
If you don’t know how to spell it correctly, you should use the spell check function in your word processor to see the correct word suggestions.
Nowadays it is very easy to look up the meaning of words with online dictionaries, but the free versions often do not provide enough information, so it is generally useful to have a paper dictionary whenever other sources do not. can respond.

Warning

Each type of dictionary has a description of meanings that are not exactly the same, some with very specific content. You must know what kind of dictionary you have. A universal dictionary is essential if you only have a dictionary of rhymes, slang, idioms, synonyms, or technical dictionaries.
Paper dictionaries are easily outdated because languages are constantly changing, you should check the publication date of the dictionary. One way to gauge a dictionary’s up-to-date is to look up relatively new words like “chick flick” ^{[6] X Research} or “metrosexual”. ^{[7] X Research Sources}

Steps

Learn about dictionaries

Word lookup

Use the dictionary’s extras

Advice

Warning

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