In our everyday life, we have to face many difficult world. On this situation, only a dictionary can help us to understand meaning of a word. So, it is very important for every person to know how to use dictionary; and looking up words very easily from any a dictionary. So, we are now going to describe dictionary uses methods, looking up any word and word meaning.
What is Dictionary ?
At first, we try to know what is dictionary. It will be better to say that dictionary is a kind book a huge collection of words. It’s main duty is that tell meaning of any word. On the other hand; it lists words of a certain language and gives us necessary information or meaning of them.
Dictionary tells us about:
1) spelling of word
2) pronunciation of word
3) meaning of word
4) about word class
How to use a dictionary to look up words ?
It is not very hard to use any dictionary and looking up word or find out word meaning. To make the meaning of words clear, example sentences are given in italics in dictionary. Example sentences show how words are used. A dictionary also gives us the synonym and the antonym of a word.
In dictionary, we find words made by adding prefixes and suffixes to the root word. Parts of speech are also shown here. In English dictionary, a verb always gives in the simple present tense. Beside that, it shows also past and past participle form of a verb.
The methods of looking up words from a dictionary:
Looking up words in a dictionary is very easy task. A dictionary presents the word in alphabetical order. It follows the alphabetical order of letters also. It means words starting with the letter A will be before the words starting with the letter B. In the same way, words starting with the letter C will come after the words starting with B.
On the other hand; the words starting with the same letter are also arranged one after another in alphabetical order in the dictionary. For example, the words, lockdown, looking and laughing all start with the letter L. But, these 3 words appear in the English dictionary in the order of laughing, looking and lockdown. Keep it mind, to find the words with a letter, look at the words at the top of the page.
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How to understand the meanings of words ?
A dictionary gives us the meanings of a word and it is main duty of dictionary. We may give an example to show how the words are used. It also helps us to make the meaning clear. A word may have more than one meaning.
The Word “dry” has a number of meanings. 3 of them are given here:
- not wet, not damp, not sticky. Sentence: The river becomes dry during the summer season.
- with very little rain. sentence: We hope the weather remains dry during our journey.
- not interesting. sentence: His speech was quite dry.
Understanding synonyms and antonyms in the dictionary:
In dictionary, the synonyms and antonyms given with words help to understand the meaning of words. A synonym is a that kind of word that means the same or almost the same as another word. There may be more than one synonyms for some of the words. Such as, Big and Large and begin and start are synonyms.
On the other hand, an antonym is a kind of word that means the opposite of another word. Such as, sorrow is the antonym of happiness and right is the antonyms of wrong.