Dictionary Entry Headword

A Dictionary Entry Headword is the Definiendum of a Dictionary Entry.

• AKA: Citation Form, Dictionary Entry Word, Dictionary Word Label, Dictionary Main Entry, Catchword.
• Context:
  • It is sorted on (in languages with Alphabets that can be ordered).
  • It can help the person identify the Word.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • “¹alone … adj”, from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
  • “au•to-da-fé . . . n".
  • “and/or . . . cong”.
  • “automatic pilot . . . n”.
  • “content … pred. adjective & noun³”, from Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
• See: Dictionary, Encyclopaedia, Etymology, Pronunciation, Compound Word.

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References

2014

• (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/headword Retrieved:2014-9-20.
  • A headword, head word, lemma, or sometimes catchword is the word under which a set of related dictionary or encyclopaedia entries appear. The headword is used to locate the entry, and dictates its alphabetical position. Depending on the size and nature of the dictionary or encyclopedia, the entry may include alternative meanings of the word, its etymology and pronunciation, compound words or phrases that contain the headword, and encyclopedic information about the concepts represented by the word.

    For example, the headword bread may contain the following (simplified) definitions:

     :Bread

     :(noun)

     :* A common food made from the combination of flour, water and yeast

     :* Money (slang)

     :(verb)

     :* To coat in breadcrumbs

     :— to know which side your bread is buttered to know how to act in your own best interests.

    The Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian contains around 500,000 headwords. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has around 273,000 headwords, while Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary has about 470,000. The Deutsches Wörterbuch (DWB), the largest lexicon of the German language, has around 330,000 headwords. These values are cited by the dictionary makers, and may not use exactly the same definition of a headword. In addition, headwords may not accurately reflect a dictionary's size. The OED and the DWB, for instance, include exhaustive historical reviews and exact citations from source documents not usually found in standard dictionaries.

    The term 'lemma' comes from the practice in Greco-Roman antiquity of using the word to refer to the headwords of marginal glosses in scholia; for this reason, the Ancient Greek plural form is sometimes used, namely lemmata (Greek λῆμμα, pl. λήμματα).

2009

• (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=entry%20word
  • S: (n) citation form, main entry word, entry word (the form of a word that heads a lexical entry and is alphabetized in a dictionary)

• http://www.btb.gc.ca/btb.php?lang=eng&cont=700
  • entry word: A word listed in a lexicographical reference work and which begins an entry block containing information about the meaning and usage of the word. Also headword.

2007

• (Shorter OED, 2007) ⇒ Oxford University Press. (2007). “Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th edition.
  • QUOTE: Every entry opens with a headword, printed in bold type. The headword is the word whose meaning, etymology, history, pronunciation, etc., are the subject of the entry. … Where a word has more than one spelling, the spelling used for the heardowrd is usally the one regarded as the dominant or preferred current form.

    The order of heardwords which are spelled the same way but have different parts of speech is as follows: abbreviation, symbol, noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, prefix/combining form, and suffix.

    A part of speech is given for all entries, except letter entries. … All the parts of speech of a heard word are listed at the beginning of an entry. Sometimes parts of speech are treated together, but more often they are in separate sections in which case each section is head with a capital initial followed by he part(s) of speech being treated in that section, e.g. A noun, B adjective.

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