hi it's ashley today we're going to learn how to read a dictionary entry ready let's go
do you know what a dictionary is let's say you're reading a story and you come across a word that
you don't know a dictionary can help a dictionary is a resource that tells us the meaning of words
there are electronic dictionaries dictionaries online and also dictionaries that are books
today we're going to talk about how to read and understand a dictionary entry
they are mostly the same in all types of dictionaries
when you look up a word in a dictionary you'll see several things here i have looked up the
word kitten and this is its dictionary entry first you see the word kitten in bold letters
then to the right of that we have the small letter n that in is the abbreviation for noun
that's the part of speech or type of word kitten is if you haven't watched our word types videos
yet be sure to do that too now on the next row we see kitten with a dot in the middle that
dot is splitting the word into two syllables so you can see that kitten has two syllables
kit ten then on the next row between two slashes we have kittens spelled in a funny way
this is called the pronunciation guide that helps us to know how to pronounce the word we
need to know that because sometimes words are not spelled the same way they sound the word is split
into syllables here too there's a little mark to show you which syllable is spoken the strongest
and sometimes letters are left out added or marked in a special way to help you read it correctly
most dictionaries have a page in the very front or back to help you understand these symbols
last we have the definition this is what the word means kitten is a young cat
now let's take a look at another entry to see if we can figure out each part together this one is
larger with a lot more information let's start with what we know this is the dictionary entry
for the word mend can you find the entry word that's right it's right here and what's this v
great that's the part of speech v is for verb then what's this perfect that's the pronunciation guide
did you notice that this word wasn't broken up into syllables that's because this word
only has one syllable mend now look at these three words here below the pronunciation guide
some words have multiple versions when suffixes are added these are different versions of mend
mended mending and mends now look here we have a 1 then a b and c many words in the english language have
more than one meaning these are the definitions for mend along with a synonym which is a word of
similar meaning and a phrase that includes the word to help you further understand its meaning
some dictionaries even give more information like antonyms which are words of opposite meaning
or the word origin which is where it came from and that's it now it's your turn be
sure to practice what you've learned by looking up words in your own dictionary
and don't forget to play our online games and quizzes and remember to always be clever