An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia, also (rarely) encyclopædia,[Owing to differences in British and American English orthographic conventions, the spellings encyclopaedia and encyclopedia both see common use, in British-/Commonwealth- and American-influenced sources, respectively. The spelling encyclopædia – with the æ ligature – was frequently used in the 19th century and is increasingly rare, although it is retained in product titles such as Encyclopædia Britannica and others. The Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's Third New International Dictionary record both spellings: the former (1989) notes the æ would be obsolete except that it is preserved in works that have Latin titles, while the latter (1961-2002) notes that the digraph is rare in the U.S. Similarly, cyclopaedia and cyclopedia are rarely used truncations of the word originating in the early 17th century.] is a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge.
For a list of notable encyclopedias in history, see list of encyclopedias.
General definition
Word history
The word comes from the
Classical Greek (pron.
enkyklios paideia), literally 'the things
education of boys in a circle', meaning "a general education". Though the notion of a compendium of knowledge
dates back thousands of years, the term was first used in the title of a book in 1541 by
Joachimus Fortius Ringelbergius in the title-page of his
Lucubrationes vel potius absolutissima kyklopaideia (Basel, 1541). It was first used as a noun by the
encyclopedist Paul Skalić in the title of his book
Encyclopaedia seu orbis disciplinarum tam sacrarum quam prophanarum epistemon ("Encyclopaedia, or Knowledge of the World of Disciplines")(Basel, 1559).
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