Dictionary in English & Information Overload

A Dictionary in English can look and feel scary, but it cannot not scare you if you know how to skillfully navigate your way through it.

First let's examine in depth all kinds of information a dictionary provides:

• Word Meanings or definitions 

• Spellings

• Syllables (syllabication)

• Pronunciation through Phonetic symbols

• Part of speech

• History (etymology)

• Synonyms (words similar in meaning) and antonyms (words opposite in meaning).

Speed up Looking up Information in Your Dictionary in English?

As you can see looking up for a piece of information in a dictionary can take a long time, which can be demotivating and downright tedious therefore it's better to practice finding information from dictionary to speedup information checking time in a dictionary:

Looking up for word meaning/s in dictionary can take a long time especially if you do not know the correct way of finding information in dictionary or are not used to consulting dictionary for word definitions.

Tell you what; try these simple English dictionary exercises to know correct way of finding information in much lesser time.

SIMPLE EXERCISES # 1

Try and do following exercises with a time limit, for example check and see how long you take to find a meaning of a word in a dictionary.

If you are advanced learner skip to these exercises.

Exercise #1: Arrange following words in alphabetical order, when done check the dictionary for correct answers.

(Tips if you find two words with the same first letter go to the second letter of the words and decide bases alphabetical order.Similarly, if first two letters the words are the same, you need to go to the third letter of the words in order to place words in correct alphabetical order. Follow this rule for all the letters of the words)

And Some More~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to skip this part of dictionary use? Then go online and look up a good English dictionary available online. Where you search the word by typing it and you get all the information about the word.

These exercises were meant to help you speed up looking for words in a dictionary in English. It’s simple really, whenever you have words which begin with same letters, just go on to the next letter and so on and so forth.

But how about Rat and Rate??? Which word will appear first in the dictionary?

It is Rat, because the word has fewer letters than Rate.

Hope you enjoyed these fun exercises in dictionary in English which will enable you to locate your word faster.

More Free English dictionary practice exercises to find- pronunciation, spelling word meanings, etymology and more

*Dictionary Facts*

The first dictionary was published in 1449. It consisted of Latin equivalents of 10,000 English words and remained a leading wordbook for several generations.

First dictionary to give word definitions in English to English was produced in 1604.

The word dictionary was first introduced /used by Henry Cockeram in The English Dictionarie 1623.

The 2-volume, A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755, by the lexicographer, essayist, and literary critic Samuel Johnson. It remained the model of English lexicography for more than a century.

The first 10 volumes of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED), popularly known as The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), were published between 1884 and 1928,

The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM was published in 1987

The first American dictionary in English was written by Noah Webster. It contained definitions of 70,000 words. It took him twenty years to complete it.

A word is included in a dictionary when it gains popularity or general public acceptance.

Slang is also included and defined in a dictionary.

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