Encyclopedia

Brockhaus Enzyklopädie in 1902

An encyclopedia (also spelled encyclopaedia or encyclopædia) is a blazon of reference work, a compendium captivation a arbitrary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a authentic annex of knowledge.¹

Encyclopedias are disconnected into articles or entries, which are usually accessed alphabetically by commodity name.² Album entries are best and added abundant than those in a lot of dictionaries.² Generally speaking, clashing concordance entries, which focus on linguistic advice about words, album online autograph focus on absolute advice to awning the affair or abstraction for which the commodity name stands.³⁴⁵⁶

Encyclopedias accept existed for about 2,000 years; the oldest still in existence, Naturalis Historia, was accounting in Roman times by Pliny the Elder. The avant-garde album acquired out of dictionaries about the 17th century. Historically, some encyclopedias were absolute in one volume, but some, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, became huge multi-volume works. Some avant-garde encyclopedias are cyberbanking and are generally advisedly available.

The chat encyclopaedia comes from the Koine Greek "ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία"⁷, from Greek "ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία"⁸, transliterated "enkyklios paideia": "enkyklios" (ἐγκύκλιος), acceptation "circular, round"⁹ + "paideia" (παιδεία), acceptation "education, appearance of a child"¹⁰. Together, the byword in actuality translates as a "well angled education" or "general knowledge".

Indeed, the purpose of an album is to aggregate ability broadcast about the globe; to set alternating its accepted adjustment to the men with whom we live, and abode it to those who will appear afterwards us, so that the plan of above-mentioned centuries will not become abortive to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, acceptable bigger instructed, will at the aforementioned time become added blameless and happy, and that we should not die afterwards accepting rendered a account to the beastly chase in the approaching years to come.¹¹

— Diderot

History

Pliny the Elder

Naturalis Historiæ, 1669 edition, appellation page.

One of the age-old all-embracing works to accept survived to avant-garde times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman elder alive in the aboriginal aeon AD. He aggregate a plan of 37 capacity accoutrement accustomed history, art and architecture, medicine, geography, cartography and all aspects of the apple about him. He declared in the alpha that he had aggregate 20,000 facts from 2000 altered works by 200 authors, and added abounding others from his own experience. The plan was appear in 80 AD^{citation needed}, although he apparently never accomplished proofing the plan afore his afterlife in the admission of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The adjustment of his abundant plan is all-inclusive and comprehensive, getting annihilation abbreviate of a abstract of acquirements and of art so far as they are affiliated with nature, or draw their abstracts from nature. He admits that

My accountable is a arid one – the apple of nature, or in added words life; and that accountable in its atomic animated department, and employing either rustic agreement or foreign, abounding barbaric words that in actuality accept to be alien with an apology. Moreover, the aisle is not a baffled artery of authorship, nor one in which the apperception is acquisitive to range: there is not one of us who has fabricated the aforementioned venture, nor yet one Greek who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject.

And he admits the problems of autograph such a work:

It is a difficult assignment to accord change to what is old, ascendancy to what is new, accuracy to the common-place, ablaze to the obscure, allure to the stale, believability to the doubtful, but attributes to all things and all her backdrop to nature.

Although there were beforehand works of a agnate nature, by Marcus Terentius Varro for example, Pliny's was the alone one to survive the Dark ages. It became actual accepted in the Roman world, and survived, with abounding copies getting fabricated and broadcast in the western world. It was one of the aboriginal classical manuscripts to be printed in 1470, and has remained accepted anytime aback as a antecedent of advice on the Roman world, and abnormally Roman art, Roman technology and Roman engineering. It is aswell a recognised antecedent for medicine, art, mineralogy, zoology, botany, geology and abounding added capacity not discussed by added classical authors. A allotment of abounding absorbing entries are those for the elephant and the murex snail, the abundant approved antecedent of Tyrian purple dye.

Although his plan has been criticized for the abridgement of artlessness in blockage the "facts", some of his altercation has been accepted by contempo research, like the amazing charcoal of Roman gold mines in Spain, abnormally at Las Medulas, which Pliny apparently saw in operation while a Procurator there a few years afore he aggregate the encyclopedia. Although abounding of the mining methods are now redundant, such as hushing and fire-setting, it is Pliny who recorded them for posterity, so allowance us accept their accent in a avant-garde context. Pliny makes bright in the alpha to the plan that he had arrested his facts by account and comparing the works of others, as able-bodied as apropos to them by name. Abounding such books are now lost works and remembered alone by his references, abundant like the absent sources mentioned in the plan of Vitruvius a aeon earlier.

Middle Ages

First printed copy of 1472 (by Guntherus Zainer, Augsburg), appellation page of book 14 (de terra et partibus), illustrated with a T and O map.

Saint Isidore of Seville, one of the greatest advisers of the aboriginal Middle Ages, is broadly accustomed as getting the columnist of the aboriginal accepted album of the Middle Ages, the Etymologiae (around 630), in which he aggregate a ample allocation of the acquirements attainable at his time, both age-old and modern. The album has 448 capacity in 20 volumes, and is admired because of the quotes and bits of texts by added authors that would accept been absent had they not been calm by Saint Isidore.

Bartholomeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum (1240) was the a lot of broadly apprehend and quoted album in the High Middle Ages¹² while Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Majus (1260) was the a lot of aggressive album in the late-medieval aeon at over 3 actor words.¹²

The Suda or Souda (Greek: Σοῦδα) is a massive 10th aeon Byzantine album of the age-old Mediterranean world, aforetime attributed to an columnist alleged Suidas. It is an all-embracing lexicon, accounting in Greek, with 30,000 entries, abounding cartoon from age-old sources that accept aback been lost, and generally acquired from medieval Christian compilers.

Arabic and Persian

The early Muslim abstracts of knowledge in the Middle Ages included abounding absolute works, and abundant development of what we now alarm scientific method^{citation needed}, historical method^{citation needed}, and citation^{citation needed}. About year 960, the Brethren of Purity of Basra¹³ were affianced in their Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity. Notable works awning Abu Bakr al-Razi's album of science, the Mutazilite Al-Kindi's abounding achievement of 270 books, and Ibn Sina's medical encyclopedia, which was a accepted advertence plan for centuries. Aswell notable are works of universal history (or sociology) from Asharites, al-Tabri, al-Masudi, Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings, Ibn Rustah, al-Athir, and Ibn Khaldun, whose Muqadimmah contains cautions apropos assurance in accounting annal that abide wholly applicative today. These advisers had an boundless admission on methods of assay and editing, due in allotment to the Islamic convenance of isnad which emphasized allegiance to accounting record, blockage sources, and agnostic inquiry.

China

The astronomic all-embracing plan in China of the Four Abundant Books of Song, aggregate by the 11th aeon during the aboriginal Song Dynasty (960–1279), was a massive arcane adventure for the time. The endure album of the four, the Prime Tortoise of the Almanac Bureau, amounted to 9.4 actor Chinese characters in 1,000 accounting volumes. There were abounding abundant encyclopedists throughout Chinese history, including the scientist and elder Shen Kuo (1031–1095) with his Dream Pool Essays of 1088, the statesman, inventor, and agriculturalist Wang Zhen (active 1290–1333) with his Nong Shu of 1313, and the accounting Tiangong Kaiwu of Song Yingxing (1587–1666), the closing of whom was termed the "Diderot of China" by British historian Joseph Needham.¹⁴

The Chinese emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty oversaw the accumulation of the Yongle Encyclopedia, one of the better encyclopedias in history, which was completed in 1408 and comprised over 370 actor Chinese characters in 11,000 handwritten volumes, of which alone about 400 abide today. In the afterwards dynasty, emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty alone composed 40,000 balladry as allotment of a 4.7 actor page library in 4 divisions, including bags of essays, alleged the Siku Quanshu which is apparently the better accumulating of books in the world. It is adorning to analyze his appellation for this knowledge, Watching the after-effects in a Sacred Sea to a Western-style appellation for all knowledge. All-embracing works, both in apery of Chinese encyclopedias and as absolute works of their own origin, accept been accepted to abide in Japan aback the ninth aeon CE.

These works were all battle affected and appropriately rarely available, above affluent assemblage or apostolic men of learning: they were expensive, and usually accounting for those extending ability rather than those application it.¹²

17th–19th centuries

Encyclopédie, 1773

The ancestry of the avant-garde abstraction of the general-purpose, broadly broadcast printed album announce the 18th aeon encyclopedists. However, Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Concordance of Arts and Sciences (1728), and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert (1751 onwards), as able-bodied as Encyclopædia Britannica and the Conversations-Lexikon, were the aboriginal to apprehend the anatomy we would admit today, with a absolute ambit of topics, discussed in abyss and organized in an accessible, analytic method. It is account acquainted that Chambers, in 1728, was possibly afterward the still beforehand advance of John Harris' Lexicon Technicum, of 1704 and afterwards editions (see aswell below); this was aswell by its appellation and agreeable "A Universal English Concordance of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not alone the Agreement of Art, but the Arts Themselves".

Much encyclopaedism of the French Renaissance was based aloft the angle of not including every actuality accepted to humans, but alone that ability that was necessary, across call was advised by a advanced array of criteria, arch to works of abundantly capricious sizes. Béroalde de Verville laid the foundation for his encyclopaedic works in a hexameral poem advantaged Les cognoissances nécessaires for example. Often, the belief had moral bases, such as in the case of Pierre de La Primaudaye's L'Académie française and Guillaume Telin's Bref sommaire des sept vertus &c.. Encyclopaedists encountered several problems with this approach, including how to adjudge what to omit as unnecessary, how to anatomy ability that resisted anatomy (often artlessly as a aftereffect of the arduous bulk of actual that adapted inclusion), and how to cope with the arrival of anew apparent ability and the furnishings that it had on above-mentioned structures.¹⁵

The appellation encyclopaedia was coined by 15th aeon humanists who misread copies of their texts of Pliny and Quintilian, and accumulated the two Greek words "enkyklios paideia" into one word.

The English physician and philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne, accurately active the chat encyclopaedia as aboriginal as 1646 in the alpha to the clairvoyant to call his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errors, a alternation of refutations of accepted errors of his age. Browne structured his encyclopaedia aloft the time-honoured schemata of the Renaissance, the alleged 'scale of creation' which ascends a hierarchical ladder via the mineral, vegetable, animal, human, all-embracing and cosmological worlds. Browne's abstract went through no beneath than 5 editions, anniversary revised and augmented, the endure copy actualization in 1672. Pseudodoxia Epidemica begin itself aloft the bookshelves of abounding accomplished European readers for throughout the backward seventeenth and aboriginal eighteenth centuries it was translated, for abounding years it was not anticipation accordant with the French and Dutcheze, into the French, Dutch and German languages as able-bodied as Latin.

Harris' Lexicon Technicum, appellation page of 2nd edition, 1708

John Harris is generally accustomed with introducing the now-familiar alphabetic architecture in 1704 with his English Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Concordance of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not alone the Agreement of Art, but the Arts Themselves – to accord its abounding title. Organized alphabetically, its agreeable does absolutely accommodate account not alone of the agreement acclimated in the arts and sciences, but of the arts and sciences themselves. Sir Isaac Newton contributed his alone appear plan on allure to the added aggregate of 1710. Its accent was on science—and conformably to the ample 18th-century compassionate of the appellation 'science', its agreeable extends above what would be alleged science or technology today, and includes capacity from the abstract and accomplished arts, e.g. a abundant bulk from law, commerce, music, and heraldry. At about 1,200 pages, its ambit can be advised as added that of an all-embracing concordance than a authentic encyclopedia. Harris himself advised it a dictionary; the plan is one of the aboriginal abstruse dictionaries in any language.^{citation needed}

Ephraim Chambers appear his Cyclopaedia in 1728. It included a ample ambit of subjects, acclimated an alphabetic arrangement, relied on abounding altered contributors and included the accession of cross-referencing added sections aural articles. Chambers has been referred to as the ancestor of the avant-garde album for this two-volume work.

A French adaptation of Chambers' plan aggressive the Encyclopédie, conceivably the a lot of acclaimed aboriginal encyclopedia, notable for its scope, the superior of some contributions, and its political and cultural appulse in the years arch up to the French revolution. The Encyclopédie was edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot and appear in 17 volumes of articles, issued from 1751 to 1765, and 11 volumes of illustrations, issued from 1762 to 1772. 5 volumes of added actual and a two aggregate index, supervised by added editors, were issued from 1776 to 1780 by Charles Joseph Panckoucke.

The Encyclopédie represented the aspect of the French Enlightenment.¹⁶ The announcement declared an aggressive goal: the Encyclopédie was to be a analytic assay of the "order and interrelations of beastly knowledge."¹⁷ Diderot, in his Encyclopédie commodity of the aforementioned name, went further: "to aggregate all the ability that now lies broadcast over the face of the earth, to accomplish accepted its accepted anatomy to the men a allotment of we live, and to abode it to those who will appear afterwards us," to accomplish men not alone wiser but aswell "more blameless and added happy."¹⁸

Realizing the inherent problems with the archetypal of ability he had created, Diderot's appearance of his own success in autograph the Encyclopédie were far from ecstatic. Diderot envisioned the absolute album as added than the sum of its parts. In his own commodity on the encyclopedia, Diderot aswell wrote, "Were an analytic concordance of the sciences and arts annihilation added than a methodical aggregate of their elements, I would still ask whom it behooves to assemble acceptable elements." Diderot beheld the ideal album as an basis of connections. He accomplished that all ability could never be accumulated in just one ample work, but he hoped the relations a allotment of the capacity could be.

The Encyclopédie in about-face aggressive the admirable Encyclopædia Britannica, which had a bashful alpha in Scotland: the aboriginal edition, issued amid 1768 and 1771, had just three agilely completed volumes – A–B, C–L, and M–Z – with a absolute of 2,391 pages. By 1797, if the third copy was completed, it had been broadcast to 18 volumes acclamation a abounding ambit of topics, with online autograph contributed by a ambit of authorities on their subjects.

The German-language Conversations-Lexikon was appear at Leipzig from 1796 to 1808, in 6 volumes. Paralleling added 18th aeon encyclopedias, its ambit was broadcast above that of beforehand publications, in an accomplishment at comprehensiveness. It was, however, advised not for bookish use but to accommodate after-effects of assay and analysis in a simple and accepted anatomy afterwards all-encompassing detail. This format, a adverse to the Encyclopædia Britannica, was broadly apish by afterwards 19th aeon encyclopedias in Britain, the United States, France, Spain, Italy and added countries. Of the affecting late-18th aeon and early-19th aeon encyclopedias, the Conversations-Lexikon is conceivably a lot of agnate in anatomy to today's encyclopedias.

A archetypal custom-built album block by Maurice Dessertenne for the Nouveau Larousse illustré (France, 1898–1907)

The aboriginal years of the 19th aeon saw a beginning of album publishing in the United Kingdom, Europe and America. In England Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802–1819) contains an astronomic bulk in advice about the automated and authentic revolutions of the time. A affection of these publications is the high-quality illustrations fabricated by engravers like Wilson Lowry of art plan supplied by specialist draftsmen like John Farey, Jr. Encyclopaedias were appear in Scotland, as a aftereffect of the Scottish Enlightenment, for apprenticeship there was of a college accepted than in the blow of the United Kingdom.

The 17-volume Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle and its supplements were appear in France from 1866 to 1890.

Encyclopædia Britannica appeared in assorted editions throughout the century, and the advance of popular education and the Mechanics Institutes, spearheaded by the Society for the Diffusion of Advantageous Knowledge led to the assembly of the Penny Cyclopaedia, as its appellation suggests issued in account numbers at a penny anniversary like a newspaper.

In the aboriginal 20th century, the Encyclopædia Britannica accomplished its eleventh edition, and bargain encyclopedias such as Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia and Everyman's Encyclopaedia were common.

20th century

1913 advertisement for Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest and one of the better abreast English encyclopedias.

Popular and affordable encyclopaedias such as Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia and the Children's Encyclopaedia appeared in the aboriginal 1920s.

In the United States, the 1950s and 1960s saw the accession of several ample accepted encyclopedias, generally awash on chapter plans. The best accepted of these were World Book and Funk and Wagnalls.

The added bisected of the 20th aeon aswell saw the advertisement of several encyclopedias that were notable for synthesizing important capacity in specific fields, generally by agency of new works authored by cogent researchers. Such encyclopedias included The Album of Philosophy (first appear in 1967 and now in its added edition), and Elsevier's Handbooks In Economics¹⁹ series. Encyclopedias of at atomic one aggregate in admeasurement abide for a lot of if not all academic disciplines, including, typically, such attenuated capacity such as bioethics and African American history.

By the backward 20th century, encyclopedias were getting appear on CD-ROMs for use with claimed computers. Microsoft's Encarta, launched in 1993, was a battleground archetype as it had no printed equivalent. Online autograph were supplemented with video and audio files as able-bodied as abundant high-quality images. Afterwards sixteen years, Microsoft discontinued the Encarta band of online writing in 2009.²⁰

Traditional encyclopedias are accounting by a bulk of active altercation writers, usually humans with an academic degree, and broadcast as proprietary content.

Encyclopedias are about acquired from what has gone before, and decidedly in the 19th century, copyright infringement was accepted a allotment of album editors. However, avant-garde encyclopedias are not alone beyond compendia, including all that came afore them. To accomplish amplitude for avant-garde topics, admired actual of celebrated use consistently had to be discarded, at atomic afore the appearance of agenda encyclopedias. Moreover, the opinions and apple angle of a authentic bearing can be empiric in the all-embracing autograph of the time. For these reasons, old encyclopedias are a advantageous antecedent of actual information, abnormally for a almanac of changes in science and technology.²¹ As of 2007, old encyclopedias whose copyright has expired, such as the 1911 copy of Britannica, are aswell the alone free content English encyclopedias appear in book form. However, works such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which were created in the attainable domain, abide as chargeless agreeable encyclopedias in added languages.

Free encyclopedias

Wikipedia is one of the aboriginal "user generated content" encyclopedias.

The abstraction of a new chargeless album began with the Interpedia angle on Usenet in 1993, which categorical an Internet-based online encyclopedia to which anyone could abide agreeable and that would be advisedly accessible. Aboriginal projects in this attitude included Everything2 and Open Site. In 1999, Richard Stallman proposed the GNUPedia, an online album which, agnate to the GNU operating system, would be a "generic" resource. The abstraction was actual agnate to Interpedia, but added in band with Stallman's GNU philosophy.

It was not until Nupedia and afterwards Wikipedia that a abiding chargeless album activity was able to be accustomed on the Internet. The English Wikipedia became the world's better album in 2004 at the 300,000 commodity stage²² and by backward 2005, Wikipedia had produced over two actor online autograph in added than 80 languages with agreeable accountant beneath the copyleft GNU Chargeless Documentation License. As of August 2009, Wikipedia has over 3 actor online autograph in English and able-bodied over 10 actor accumulated in over 250 languages. Aback 2003, added chargeless encyclopedias like the Chinese-language Baidu Baike and Hudong, as able-bodied as English accent encyclopedias like Citizendium and Knol accept appeared.

21st century

Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Advertence Suite, an archetype of 21st aeon encyclopedias.

The encyclopedia's hierarchical anatomy and evolving attributes is decidedly adjustable to a disk-based or on-line computer format, and all above printed multi-subject encyclopedias had confused to this adjustment of supply by the end of the 20th century. Disk-based, about DVD-ROM or CD-ROM format, publications accept the advantage of getting cheaply produced and calmly portable. Additionally, they can awning media which are absurd to abundance in the printed format, such as animations, audio and video. Hyperlinking amid conceptually accompanying items is aswell a cogent benefit, although even Diderot's album had cross-referencing. On-line encyclopedias action the added advantage of getting dynamic: new advice can be presented about immediately, rather than cat-and-mouse for the next absolution of a changeless format, as with a disk- or paper-based publication. Abounding printed encyclopedias frequently appear anniversary added volumes ("yearbooks") to amend contest amid editions, as a fractional band-aid to the botheration of blockage up-to-date, but this of advance appropriate the clairvoyant to analysis both the capital volumes and the added volume(s). Some disk-based encyclopedias action subscription-based admission to online updates, which are again chip with the agreeable already on the user's harder deejay in a abode not attainable with a printed encyclopedia.

Information in a printed album necessarily needs some anatomy of hierarchical structure. Traditionally, the adjustment active is to present the advice ordered alphabetically by the commodity title. About with the appearance of activating cyberbanking formats the charge to appoint a pre-determined anatomy is beneath necessary. Nonetheless, a lot of cyberbanking encyclopedias still action a ambit of authoritative strategies for the articles, such as by subject, area, or alphabetically.

CD-ROM and Internet-based encyclopedias aswell action greater seek abilities than printed versions. While the printed versions await on indexes to abetment in analytic for topics, computer attainable versions acquiesce analytic through commodity altercation for keywords or phrases.

Characteristics

This across needs added citations for verification. Please advice improve this article by abacus reliable references. Unsourced actual may be challenged and removed. (June 2010)

The avant-garde encyclopaedia was developed from the dictionary in the 18th century. Historically, both encyclopaedias and dictionaries accept been researched and accounting by well-educated, abreast agreeable experts, but they are decidedly altered in structure. A concordance is a linguistic plan which primarily focuses on alphabetical advertisement of words and their definitions. Synonymous words and those accompanying by the accountable amount are to be begin broadcast about the dictionary, giving no accessible abode for all-embracing treatment. Thus, a concordance about provides bound information, analysis or accomplishments for the chat defined. While it may action a definition, it may leave the clairvoyant defective in understanding the meaning, acceptation or limitations of a term, and how the appellation relates to a broader acreage of knowledge.

To abode those needs, an encyclopaedia commodity is about non linguistic, and covers not a word, but a subject or discipline. As able-bodied as defining and advertisement alike agreement for the topic, the commodity is able to amusement it in added abyss and aback the a lot of accordant accumulated ability on that subject. An encyclopaedia commodity aswell generally includes abounding maps and illustrations, as able-bodied as bibliography and statistics.

Four above elements ascertain an encyclopaedia: its accountable matter, its scope, its adjustment of organization, and its adjustment of production:

• Encyclopaedias can be general, absolute online autograph on topics in every acreage (the English-language Encyclopædia Britannica and German Brockhaus are acclaimed examples). Accepted encyclopaedias generally accommodate guides on how to do a array of things, as able-bodied as anchored dictionaries and gazetteers.^{citation needed} There are aswell encyclopaedias that awning a advanced array of capacity but from a authentic cultural, ethnic, or civic perspective, such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia or Encyclopaedia Judaica.
• Works of all-embracing ambit aim to aback the important accumulated ability for their accountable domain, such as an encyclopaedia of medicine, philosophy, or law. Works alter in the across of actual and the abyss of discussion, depending on the target audience. (For example, the Medical encyclopaedia produced by A.D.A.M., Inc. for the U.S. National Institutes of Health.)
• Some analytic adjustment of alignment is capital to authoritative an encyclopaedia accessible as a plan of reference. There accept historically been two capital methods of acclimation printed encyclopaedias: the alphabetical adjustment (consisting of a bulk of abstracted articles, organised in alphabetical order), or alignment by hierarchical categories. The above adjustment is today the a lot of accepted by far, abnormally for accepted works. The alteration of cyberbanking media, however, allows new possibilities for assorted methods of alignment of the aforementioned content. Further, cyberbanking media action ahead doubtful capabilities for search, indexing and cantankerous reference. The epigraph from Horace on the appellation page of the 18th aeon Encyclopédie suggests the accent of the anatomy of an encyclopaedia: "What adroitness may be added to commonplace affairs by the ability of adjustment and connection."
• As avant-garde multimedia and the advice age accept evolved, they accept had an ever-increasing aftereffect on the collection, verification, summation, and presentation of advice of all kinds. Projects such as Everything2, Encarta, h2g2, and Wikipedia are examples of new forms of the encyclopaedia as advice retrieval becomes simpler.

Some works advantaged "dictionaries" are in actuality agnate to encyclopaedias, abnormally those anxious with a authentic acreage (such as the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and Black's Law Dictionary). The Macquarie Dictionary, Australia's civic dictionary, became an encyclopedic dictionary afterwards its aboriginal copy in acceptance of the use of able nouns in accepted communication, and the words acquired from such able nouns.

In practice, however, there is no assured aberration amid factual, "encyclopedic" advice and linguistic advice such as appears in dictionaries.⁵²³²⁴ Appropriately encyclopedias may accommodate actual that is aswell begin in dictionaries, and carnality versa.²³ In particular, concordance entries generally accommodate absolute advice about the affair called by the word.²³²⁴

However, there are ample differences amid encyclopedias and dictionaries. A lot of noticeably, album online autograph are longer, fuller and added absolute than entries in a lot of general-purpose dictionaries.²²⁴ There are differences in agreeable as well. Dictionaries accommodate linguistic advice about words themselves, while encyclopedias focus added on the affair for which those words stand.³⁴⁵⁶ Thus, while concordance entries are accordingly anchored to the chat described, album online autograph can be accustomed a altered admission name. As such, concordance entries are not absolutely translatable into added languages, but album online autograph can be.³

Etymology

Title page of "Lucubrationes..." 1541 edition, the aboriginal book to use the chat album in the title

The chat "encyclopaedia" comes from the Pseudo-²⁵ Classical Greek "ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία", transliterated "enkyklios paideia"; "enkyklios" acceptation "cyclical, periodic, or ordinary", and "paideia" acceptation "education". Together, the byword in actuality translates as a "[well-]rounded education", acceptation "general knowledge". Copyists of Latin manuscripts took this byword to be a individual Greek word, "enkuklopaedia", with the aforementioned meaning, and this affected Greek chat became the New Latin chat "encyclopaedia", which in about-face came into English. Though the angle of a abstract of ability dates aback bags of years, the appellation was aboriginal acclimated in the appellation of a book in 1541 by Joachimus Fortius Ringelbergius, Lucubrationes vel potius absolutissima kyklopaideia (Basel, 1541). The chat encyclopaedia was aboriginal acclimated as a noun in the appellation of his book by the Croatian encyclopedist Pavao Skalić in his Encyclopaedia seu orbis disciplinarum tam sacrarum quam prophanarum epistemon (Encyclopaedia, or Ability of the Apple of Disciplines, Basel, 1559).^{dubious – discuss} One of the oldest colloquial uses was by François Rabelais in his Pantagruel in 1532.²⁶²⁷

Several encyclopaedias accept names that awning the suffix -p(a)edia, e.g., Banglapedia (on affairs accordant for Bengal).

In British usage, the spellings encyclopedia and encyclopaedia are both current.²⁸ Although the closing spelling is advised added "proper" by British speakers, the above is acceptable added accepted in British English, in allotment due to the advance of American English. In American usage, alone the above is frequently used.²⁹ The spelling encyclopædia—with the æ ligature—was frequently acclimated in the 19th aeon and is added rare, although it is retained in artefact titles such as Encyclopædia Britannica and others. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) annal encyclopædia and encyclopaedia as according alternatives (in that order), and addendum the æ would be anachronistic except that it is preserved in works that accept Latin titles. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1997–2002) appearance encyclopedia as the capital headword and encyclopaedia as a accessory variant. In addition, cyclopedia and cyclopaedia are now rarely-used beneath forms of the chat basic in the 17th century.

See also

Notes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media accompanying to: Encyclopedias

Look up encyclopedia, encyclopaedia, or encyclopedic in Wiktionary, the chargeless dictionary.

• CNET's album meta-search (includes Wikipedia)
• Encyclopaedia and Hypertext
• Internet Accurateness Project – Biographical errors in encyclopedias and almanacs
• Encyclopedia – Diderot's commodity on the Album from the aboriginal Encyclopédie.
• What makes a bookish encyclopedia?
• De expetendis et fugiendis rebus – Aboriginal Renaissance encyclopedia
• Science Dictionary – Online Absolute Science Encyclopedia
• Errors and inconsistencies in several printed advertence books and encyclopedias
• Digital encyclopedias put the apple at your fingertips – CNET article
• Librarians' Internet Index – a account of encyclopedias online
• Encyclopedias online University of Wisconsin – Stout advertisement by category
• Chambers' Cyclopaedia, 1728, with the 1753 supplement
• Encarta Encyclopedia (Archived 2009-10-31)
• Encyclopædia Americana, 1851, Francis Lieber ed. (Boston: Mussey & Co.) at the University of Michigan Authoritative of America site
• Encyclopædia Britannica, online autograph and illustrations from 9th ed., 1875–89, and 10th ed., 1902–03.
• Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911, at the LoveToKnow site.
• Encyclopedia Sites list
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • "Cyclopædia". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. 
  • "Encyclopædia". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. 
  • "Encyclopædia". The New Student's Advertence Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co.. 1914. 
  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Encyclopaedia". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
  • "Encyclopædia". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.