A1 a book that contains a list of words in alphabetical order and that explains their meanings, or

gives a word for them in another language; a similar product for use on a computer:

a French-English/English-French dictionary

a bilingual/monolingual dictionary

To check how a word is spelled, look it up in a dictionary.

a book that gives information about a particular subject, in which the entries (= words or
phrases) are given in alphabetical order:

a biographical/science dictionary

a dictionary of quotations

More examples

"Is that the correct spelling?" "I don't know - look it up in a dictionary."

In this dictionary, verbs which are intransitive are marked [I].

Count nouns are shown in this dictionary with [C].

This dictionary went online in 1999.

Notes on how to use this dictionary can be found at the beginning of the book.

Thesaurus: synonyms and related words

(Definition of “dictionary” from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus ©
Cambridge University Press)

English

American

Examples
"dictionary" in American English

See all translations

dictionary

noun [ C ] US /ˈdɪk·ʃəˌner·i/

a book that lists words with their meanings given in the same or in another language, and often
includes other information

(Definition of “dictionary” from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge

University Press)

English

American

Examples

Examples of “dictionary”

These examples of dictionary are from the Cambridge English Corpus and from sources on the
web.