ENCYCLOPAEDIA

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does encyclopaedia mean? 

• ENCYCLOPAEDIA (noun)
  The noun ENCYCLOPAEDIA has 1 sense:

1. a reference work (often in several volumes) containing articles on various topics (often arranged in alphabetical order) dealing with the entire range of human knowledge or with some particular specialty

  Familiarity information: ENCYCLOPAEDIA used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ENCYCLOPAEDIA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A reference work (often in several volumes) containing articles on various topics (often arranged in alphabetical order) dealing with the entire range of human knowledge or with some particular specialty

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

cyclopaedia; cyclopedia; encyclopaedia; encyclopedia

Hypernyms ("encyclopaedia" is a kind of...):

book of facts; reference; reference book; reference work (a book to which you can refer for authoritative facts)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "encyclopaedia"):

book of knowledge (an elementary encyclopedia dealing with general knowledge)

 Context examples 

In future they hope to expand it further, using similar experimental techniques, to produce an encyclopaedia of mutation patterns caused by environmental agents.

(‘Fingerprint database’ could help scientists to identify new cancer culprits, University of Cambridge)

And there's another fellow—Parry—an Australian, a statistician and a sporting encyclopaedia.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Judge Scott still held to the same opinion, and proved it to everybody's dissatisfaction by measurements and descriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various works on natural history.

(White Fang, by Jack London)