World Book Dictionary

World Book Dictionary

'The World Book Dictionary" is a two volume English dictionary published as a supplement to the "World Book Encyclopedia". It was originally published in 1963 under the editorship of Clarence Barnhart, who wrote definitions for the Thorndike-Barnhart graded dictionary series for children. In some editions it was called the "World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary".

Like the encyclopedia, it is designed to be user friendly to young people, yet comprehensive enough to be useful to adults. The definitions are designed with consideration for the age at which a person usually encounters the word. Quotations or sample sentences are offered with many words. Most proper names are excluded, leaving their treatment to the encyclopedia.

The word list is based on a formula for calculating frequency of use. Originally covering about 180,000 words, it has expanded to nearly a quarter million, making it considerably larger than most dictionaries, though not of "unabridged" scope. Its vocabulary has largely been drawn from the "Century Dictionary", the "Oxford English Dictionary", and Barnhart's own extensive quotation file begun in the 1940s.


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