(ĕn-sīˌklə-pēˈdē-ə)
noun A comprehensive reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a particular field, usually arranged alphabetically.
Word History: The word
encyclopedia, which to us usually means a large set of books, descends from a phrase that involved coming to grips with the contents of such books. The Greek phrase is
enkuklios paideia, made up of
enkuklios, “cyclical, periodic, ordinary,” and
paideia, “education,” and meaning “general education.” Copyists of Latin manuscripts took this phrase to be a single Greek word,
enkuklopaedia, with the same meaning, and this spurious Greek word became the New Latin word
encyclopaedia, coming into English with the sense “general course of instruction,” first recorded in 1531. In New Latin the word was chosen as the title of a reference work covering all knowledge. The first such use in English is recorded in 1644.
