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Electronic Dictionary

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 67 Accesses

Synonyms

eDictionary; Machine-readable dictionary (MRD); Terminological database

Definition

An electronic dictionary contains lexicographic information that is stored and accessed via a computer. The term “electronic dictionary” may refer to the data alone (e.g., a machine-readable dictionary), but more typically refers to a software or software/hardware system that provides access to dictionary data. Although a dictionary may include encyclopedic entries, it is typically distinct from an electronic encyclopedia. Terminological databases are special-purpose dictionaries that are used primarily to distinguish domain-specific terminology and choose appropriate terms when translating technical documents. Thesauri are special-purpose word books organized by relationships between words. They may contain definitions, but most famously, Roget’s Thesaurus (available in electronic form from Project Gutenberg) does not.

Historical Background

The first widely available electronic data from print...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Amsler RA. Machine-readable dictionaries, Chapter 6. In: Williams ME, editor. Annual review of information science and technology (ARIST). vol. 19. Knowledge Industry Publications; 1984.

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  2. Amsler RA. The Structure of the Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary [Ph.D. dissertation]. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin; 1980.

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  3. Byrd RJ, Calzolari N, Chodorow MS, Klavans JL, Neff MS, Rizk OA. Tools and methods for computational lexicology. Comput Linguist. 1987;13(3–4):219–40.

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  4. Fellbaum C. WordNet: an electronic lexical database. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 1998.

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  5. Sérasset G. Recent trends of electronic dictionary research and development in europe. In: Technical Memorandum, Electronic Dictionary Research (EDR). Tokyo; 1993. p. 93.

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  6. TEI Consortium. Dictionaries. TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. Available online at: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/DI.html. Accessed 21 Feb 2008.

  7. Weiner ESC. Computerizing the Oxford English dictionary. J Sch Publ. 1985;16(3):239–53.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSC, Falls Church, VA, USA

    Robert A. Amsler

Authors
  1. Robert A. Amsler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert A. Amsler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, Univ. of Waterloo, 200 Univ. Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Frank Tompa

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Amsler, R.A. (2016). Electronic Dictionary. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_809-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_809-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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