DICTATOR. 219 DICTIONARY. legally elected dictator was M. Junius Pera, who entered on his ollice B.C. -ItJ. From tliis time uonihial dictators were frequently appointed for the purpose of holding the elections, but even these finally disappeared (B.C. 202). Hence- forth, in critical times, a sort of dictatorial power was conferred on the consuls by the Senate by the well-knov n formula : "That the consuls should see to it that the State should receive no damage." This practice rendered the appoint- ment of dictators no longer necessary. Consult Mommsen, Ilijmische Staatsrecht, ii. 133 foil. DICTIONARY (IIL. dictionarius. word-book, from Lat. itictio, word, from tUcerc, to say). In its original and most common application, a viorU «hich is linguistic in character, being a compilation of all or a portion of the words of a language arranged according to some exact order, usually the alphabetical one, with brief explanations and definitions. In later and more elaborate dictionaries additional information of an appropriate character is included within the scope of the work. Thus etymologies, indications of pronunciation, and variations in orthography may be given, while a still further expansion in- cludes citations which illustrate the use of a word. The name is said to have l)eeii used for the first time by Joannes de Garlandia, who died in A.D. 1250. He described his book containing a classified list of words as a dictionarius. In its use the word dictionary is no longer confined to a simple linguistic compilation, but is applicable to works on special or technical subjects, which through the medium of an alphabetical classifica- tion of words belonging to that subject give i.ppropriate and detailed information. These dictionaries on special subjects are very nu- merous, such as biographical, historical, biblio- graphical, geographical, philosophical, mathemat- ical, zoological, medical, and architectural dic- tionaries. The following terms are more or less synony- mous with dictionary — vocabulary, which is a list of works restricted to a single work or to some division of the language, e.g. the vocabu- lary of Ciesar's (laUic ITar; lexicon, a word ap- plied by English-speaking people to a dictionary <>i some foreign language, as Hebrew. Greek, or Latin; glossary, a partial dictionary of words of a certain dialect or of antiquated or technical tenns accompanied by glosses or explanations; thesaurus (verbornm), i.e. a treasury of words, an elaborate dictionary with many references and full explanations, ilore unfamiliar are idioticoii, from Greek MtuTHtii, idiot ikos, belonging to an individual, and oiiomnxticon : the former, common in •lermany. indicates a dictionary of words of a dialect; the latter, from the Greek tvofia, onoma, name, is a dictionary of names, as the Onomasti- cnn of .Julius Pollux of the second century — a Greek dictionary in ten books containing words arr.inged according to their meaning. Index de- notes a vocabulary without explanatory matter arranged in alphabetical order, often placed at the close of a book to indicate more exactly and definitely the contents thereof. The gazet- teer and concordance should be mentioned as hav- ing certain characteristics of dictionaries. The first is a geographical dictionary with names of plaf-es, seas, rivers, etc., in alphabetical order, with a brief account of each. The word was used first by Lawrence Echard, whose work was en- voi.. VI.— 15. titled 77ic Ouzctlcer ; or, Xcasman's Interpreter — .1 Ocographical Index (11th ed., London, 1716). In part ii. the author speaks of his work as "The Gazetteer. A concordance is an index of various passages in a book classified according to certain leading words which are arranged in an alpha- betical order. As this was first made for the liible, Johnson defines it as "a book which shows in how many texts of Scripture any word occurs." Thus, as examples, may be cited: Cruden, A Complete Concordance to the Old and Sew Testa- ments (London, 1859) ; Clarke, Concordance to Shakespeare (ib., 1827); Bright well, A Con- cordance to the Entire Works of Alfred Tennyson (ib., 18G9). History. The earliest dietionarj' of which there is any mention is that made in Xineveh in the reign of Asshurbanipal in the seventh century B.C., which is impressed on a number of clay tablets in cuneiform letters. Arabic scholars early busied themselves with dictionary-making, a work very necessary for a language as copious as theirs. The first to attempt to gather the entire Arabic vocabulary in one work was prob- ably Khalil ibn -limed of Oman (died 701). He adopted an arrangement not alphabetical, but ac- cording to certain phonetic and physiological principles. Of Klialirs many successors, llukar- ram ibn Mansur. an Egyptian (died 1311), and al-Firuzabadi. a Persian by birth, whose travels, however, entitled him to be called a citizen of the Oriental world (died 1414). may be mentioned. The work of the former (Cairo, 1300 sqq.) filled 20 volumes, and the Camus ('dictionary') of the latter, preserved only in part, extended to GO, or, according to some accounts, to KM) vol- umes. While in a certain sense Hebrew lexi- cography began with the Massoretie (sixth- eighth centuries), the real production of diction- aries dated from the tenth century, and took its origin and stimulus from the study of Arabic. Rabbi .Saadia (iaon ( died 942 ) was the first lexicographer: David Kimchi (c.l200), author of the Book, of Roots, was the greatest. Mena- hcin ben Sarug (c.9()0) made a dictionary arranged according to stems. .Judah Hayyuj (c.lOOO) propounded the theory of triliteral roots, and his work was continued by Rabbi Jonah (Ibn -Tanah, e.l030). Sanskrit diction- aries begin at a very early date in the glossary of Yaska to the Rig-Veda (about the fifth century B. c), and they continue to be for the most part collections of rare words and meanings, lieing de- signed especially for the authors who composed the artificial iioetry which is so prevalent in India. These dictionaries, the most of which were written after the fifth century a.d., are in- variably in verse, and are divisible into the two general classes of lexicons of synnn iis and homonyms. Alphabetic arrangement begins only in the latter period of the homonymous diction- aries. The older works of this class arrange the words in order of importance, while the synony- mous dictionaries are classified according to sub- jects. Other modes are according to nuinlier of syllables in the word, its gender, or its final let- ter. The number of native Sanskrit lexicons is over fifty, and of them the .mara-kosa (q.v.) is the most frequently qtioted. There are also special dictionaries em botany, medicine, atjd astronomy, as well as Buddhistic glo-^saries in Pali, and polyglot lexicons in Sanskrit. Tibe-
