Classification of dictionaries)

There are about 250 different kinds of dictionaries and their typology is not easy. The leading competing companies compiling and publishing English dictionaries produce various, though very often similar series known as Oxford, Cambridge, Longman, Collins, Chambers's, Penguin dictionaries (in Great Britain) and Webster's (G. and C. Merriam Co.), Funk and Wagnalls Co., Random house dictionaries (in the USA). Here arc the most important principles along which they may be classified.

All reference books that provide a large amount of information of a particular kind. But

according to the type of items included and the kind of information about them all

dictionaries may be divided into two categories: encyclopedic and linguistic dictionaries,

or into encyclopedias and dictionaries.,

An encyclopedic dictionary is a thing-book. It deals with every kind of knowledge about the world (general encyclopedia) or with one particular branch of it (special encyclopedia).

In contrast to a linguistic dictionary, which is a word-book, some common words, like mother, father, house, I, the, white, oh, do not enter an encyclopedia, while many geographical names and names of prominent people make up an important part of it.

Some words, like taxonomic names of plants, animals, and diseases enter both kinds of dictionaries, but information about them has a different character. In linguistic dictionaries the most extensive information is linguistic information about a word. In encyclopedic dictionaries the most extensive is extralinguistic information about a concept.

The most well known encyclopedias in English are The Encyclopedia Britannica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes). Very popular in Great Britain are also Chamber's Encyclopedia (in 15 volumes) and Everyman's Encyclopedia (in 12 volumes). Among single-volume encyclopedias is the Hutchinson 20th Century Encyclopedia.