Orðasafn

Orðasafn is an Icelandic term meaning a collection or lexicon of words. In linguistic and lexicographic contexts it refers to a repository of vocabulary, usually organized by lemmas and enriched with information about pronunciation, part of speech, meanings, inflections, and example usage. The word is formed from orð (word) and safn (collection). Historically, orðasafn has described both dictionaries and word lists compiled to document a language's vocabulary, from scholarly glossaries to public dictionaries.

In practice, an orðasafn can be a printed dictionary or a digital lexicon. Modern orðasöfn often enable searching by word form, morphological variants, or semantic relations, and may include etymology, synonyms and antonyms, frequency data, and usage notes. In language technology, lexicons are used by spell checkers, grammar tools, machine translation, and natural language processing as structured databases of lexical items.

There are general orðasöfn that aim to cover the entire vocabulary of a language, as well as specialized ones focusing on domains such as science, law, or regional dialects. In Icelandic, orðasafn is closely related to orðabók, a traditional term for a dictionary; the latter is a type of orðasafn but not the only possible form. See also lexicon, dictionary, glossary.