Encyclopedic dictionary

An encyclopedic dictionary typically includes many short listings, arranged alphabetically, and discussing a wide range of topics.

[citation needed] Historically, the term has been used to refer to any encyclopedic reference book (that is, one comprehensive in scope),[citation needed] which was organized alphabetically, as with the familiar dictionary (the term dictionary preceded encyclopedia in common usage by about two centuries).

John Harris subtitled his landmark Lexicon Technicum a "universal English dictionary of Arts and Sciences"; it was the first English-language, alphabetically ordered collection of knowledge.

The 18th-century encyclopedists, in turn, dramatically expanded the depth and, in some cases, substantially revised the organization of the encyclopedic dictionary to create the early major encyclopedias, the French Encyclopédie and later the British Encyclopædia Britannica.

The first version of the German Conversations-Lexikon (1796–1808) was just 2,762 pages in six volumes,[citation needed] and while that work was later expanded, its format using numerous, less lengthy entries served as the principal model for many 19th-century encyclopedias and encyclopedic dictionaries.