Why do we have dictionaries?

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Have you ever looked something up in the dictionary, or maybe had a grown-up help you to look something up in the dictionary? Where do dictionaries come from, and why do we have them? 

Although we usually don’t realize it day by day, the words we use are very important in helping us to communicate! At its most basic, a word is a sound (or a series of sounds) that is associated with a meaning, and which can’t be broken down into smaller independently-usable parts; in written languages, a word also has a specific way of being spelled. The reason we have dictionaries is because they help us to keep all of these sounds, definitions, and spellings together in one place! Have you ever forgotten the meaning or spelling of a word, or you saw a word in a book and you weren’t sure how to pronounce it? – Thanks to dictionaries, we have a place where we can look it up!

The name for a person who makes dictionaries is “lexicographer.” (And if you don’t believe us, just look it up!) While each specific dictionary has it’s own special method for determining new words to add, most involve the same general steps, which usually starts with studying publications such as books, newspapers, and the Internet to see the way people are using words! When a lexicographer determines that a word is being widely used over a consistent period of time, then they usually decide to include it in the next edition of the dictionary. Sometimes it takes years of use for a new word to qualify for entrance to a dictionary, while sometimes a new word becomes so important so quickly that it makes its way in sooner!