des and Danes adopted _ordbok_, _ordbog_. The Icelandic
_ordabok_, like the German, contains the genitive plural. The Slavonic
nations use _slovar_, _slovnik_, and the southern Slavs _ryetshnik_,
from _slovo_, _ryetsh_, a word, formed, like dictionary and lexicon,
without composition. Many other names have been given to dictionaries,
as _thesaurus_, _Sprachschatz_, _cornucopia_, _gazophylacium_,
_comprehensorium_, _catholicon_, to indicate their completeness;
_manipulus predicantium_, _promptorium puerorum_, _liber memorialis_,
_hortus vocabulorum_, _ionia_ (a violet bed), _alveary_ (a beehive),
_kamoos_ (the sea), _haft kulzum_ (the seven seas), _tsze tien_ (a
standard of character), _onomasticon_, _nomenclator_, _bibliotheca_,
_elucidario_, _Mundart-sammlung_, _clavis_, _scala_, _pharetra_,[2] _La
Crusca_ from the great Italian dictionary, and _Calepino_ (in Spanish
and Italian) from the Latin dictionary of Calepinus.

The tendency of great dictionaries is to unite in themselves all the
peculiar features of special dictionaries. A large dictionary is most
useful when a word is to be thoroughly studied, or when there is
difficulty in making out the meaning of a word or phrase. Special
dictionaries are more useful for special purposes; for instance,
synonyms are best studied in a dictionary of synonyms. And small
dictionaries are more convenient for frequent use, as in translating
from an unfamiliar language, for words may be found more quickly, and
they present the words and their meanings in a concentrated and compact
form, instead of being scattered over a large space, and separated by
other matter. Dictionaries of several languages, called _polyglots_, are
of different kinds. Some are polyglot in the vocabulary, but not in the
explanation, like Johnson's dictionary of Persian and Arabic explained
in English; some in the interpretation, but not in the vocabulary or
explanation, like _Calepini octoglotton_, a Latin dictionary of Latin,
with the meanings in seven languages. Many great dictionaries are now
polyglot in this sense. Some are polyglot in the vocabulary and
interpretation, but are explained in one language, like Jal's _Glossaire
nautique_, a glossary of sea terms in many languages, giving the
equivalents of each word in the other languages, but the explanation in
French. Pauthier's _Annamese Dictionary_ is polyglot in a peculiar way.
It gives the Chinese characters with their pronunciation in Chinese and
Ann