The Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa ("Houaiss Dictionary of the Portuguese Language") is a major reference dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

 for the Portuguese language

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, edited by Brazilian writer Antônio Houaiss

Antônio Houaiss

Antônio Houaiss was a Brazilian lexicographer, writer and translator, who served as the Minister of Culture.He was the son of Lebanese immigrants....

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The dictionary was composed by a team of two hundred lexicographers

Lexicography

Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....

 from several countries. The project started in 1986 and was finished in 2000, one year after Houaiss's death.

The book claims to be the most complete Portuguese dictionary to date, with around 228,500 entries, 376,500 senses, 415,500 synonym

Synonym

Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...

s, 26,400 antonym

Antonym

In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow. The notion of incompatibility here refers to the fact that one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not...

s, and 57,000 historical words. It aims to cover all variants of the language, including African

African Portuguese

Portuguese is spoken in five African states: Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique. Like English and French, Portuguese has become a post-colonial language in Africa and one of the working languages of the African Union and the Southern African Development Community...

, Brazilian

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....

, and European Portuguese

European Portuguese

European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...

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