Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian
Encyclopedia
Thesaurus
A thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning , in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations...
of the Lithuanian language
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
and is one of the most extensive lexicographical
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
pieces in the world.
It contains more than half a million Lithuanian headword
Headword
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...
s, and is 20 volumes (22 thousand pages) long. Most words have an explanation of their usage, origins and area of usage with examples. The Dictionary contains words collected from all written forms, since the first Lithuanian published
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
book in 1547 until 2001.
History
The idea of the Dictionary belongs to LithuanianLithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
philologist Kazimieras Būga
Kazimieras Buga
Kazimieras Būga was a Lithuanian linguist and philologist. He was a professor of linguistics, who mainly worked on the Lithuanian language.He was born at Pažiegė, near Dusetos, then part of the Russian Empire...
. He started collecting material for the dictionary in 1902 and had over 617,000 cards with words, part of them from Antanas Juška
Antanas Juška
Antanas Juška was a Roman Catholic pastor, lexicographer, folklorist, and musicologist....
dictionary. The first part of the dictionary was printed in 1924, the complete first volume in 1941 (letters A-B) under supervision of Juozas Balčikonis
Juozas Balcikonis
Juozas Balčikonis was a Lithuanian linguist and teacher, who contributed to the standardization of the Lithuanian language.- References :...
. The second volume appeared in 1947, and together with the first it was banned and hidden by the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
authorities because of ideological reasons. These volumes are now bibliographical rarities. The first and second volumes had to be republished later. Work continued as the third volume was published in 1956, although it was difficult under the Soviet regime; some words (especially religious) were forced to be omitted. The loss was restored after Lithuania regained independence and ideological barriers were removed.
The work on the dictionary took more than six decades by many generations of linguists
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
. It was finished in 2005, and an online version has appeared.
The dictionary is available printed, on CD-Rom
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
and online.