Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary and Vernacular Language

The Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary and Vernacular Language (Речник српскохрватског књижевног и народног језика, Rečnik srpskohrvatskog književnog i narodnog jezika) or the Dictionary of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Речник Српске академије наука и уметност, Rečnik Srpske akdemije nauka i umetnosti, or Rečnik SANU for short) is the official dictionary of the Serbo-Croatian language published by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

It is a historical dictionary whose entries are based on primary sources of actual usage in the last two centuries.

By comparison, the Oxford English Dictionary has around 300,000, German Deutsches Wörterbuch has around 350,000, and Dutch Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal has about 430,000 entries.

[5] The dictionary was initiated in 1888 by Stojan Novaković, a member of the Serbian Royal Academy, in the centenary commemoration of the birthday of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.

The publication of the Dictionary started in 1959, with a prominent Serbian linguist Aleksandar Belić as the editor-in-chief for the first volume, before he died in 1960.