Lexicography

Lexicography is the art and science of compiling, writing, and editing dictionaries. It describes a language’s lexicon—the words, forms, meanings, and usage that speakers rely on. The aim is to present entries that are accurate, usable, and verifiable. The discipline links lexicology, semantics, and information design, while focusing on how dictionaries organize and present lexical knowledge.

Historically, lexicography began with glossaries and word lists in antiquity and the medieval period. Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae and other compendia organized word knowledge, while Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) raised definitional standards. The Oxford English Dictionary, begun in the 19th century, documented historical senses and forms. These developments established the modern basis for scholarly and reference lexicography.

Types of dictionaries include monolingual works describing one language and bilingual or learner’s dictionaries translating between languages. Descriptive lexicography records usage as it occurs, whereas prescriptive approaches prescribe norms. Lexicographic work relies on corpora, etymology, pronunciation, sense inventories, examples, and cross-references. Entries typically include the lemma, part of speech, definitions, usage examples, etymology, pronunciation, synonyms, and related terms.

In the digital era, corpus linguistics and computational methods underpin lexicography, enabling data-driven sense distinctions, rapid updating, and interactive dictionaries. Lexicography now also supports specialized dictionaries for science, medicine, and technology, as well as crowdsourced and open-access projects. Resources include digital corpora, lexical databases, and machine-readable lexicographic records. The field remains central to language documentation, education, natural language processing, and information retrieval.