Glossary of Terms - EPUB Dictionaries and Glossaries Specification

This document contains section 1.2 Terminology of the EPUB Dictionaries and Glossaries specification. It is marked up as a glossary as specified in section 2.3 Content Documents - Glossaries.

ancestor context
A property [EPUB301] carried by an ancestor element being semantically inflected [ContentDocs30], either implicitly or explicitly via the epub:type attribute.
bilingual dictionary
A dictionary in which the meanings of words in a source language are translated into a different target language. Translation may either be unidirectional (English to Japanese) or bidirectional (both English to Japanese and Japanese to English).
canonical form
The correct spelling of a dictionary headword, unadorned by extra characters or styles conveying additional information about that headword (such as pronunciation symbols, hyphenation points, and the like).
entry
The organizational unit of EPUB Dictionary content, consisting of at least one headword and further information on it. An entry in an EPUB Dictionary is independently distributable, meaning it can be rendered to users outside of its EPUB Dictionary Publication context.

Semantic markup of the entry and its microstructure is detailed in Content Documents - Dictionaries.

EPUB Dictionary
A dictionary, encyclopedia, or similarly organized reference work in an EPUB Dictionary Publication that a Reading System can use to look up terms in any Publication. It consists of entries whose headwords are in a common language and an accompanying Search Key Map Document that links search keys to those entries.
EPUB Dictionary Publication
An EPUB Publication whose content consists primarily of one or more EPUB Dictionaries and identified in Package Metadata of each Rendition as described in Dictionary Identification.

A monolingual EPUB Dictionary Publication will contain only one EPUB Dictionary, whereas a bilingual or multilingual dictionary Publication can contain multiple EPUB Dictionaries. For example: in a French-English bidirectional bilingual dictionary publication, the French to English dictionary constitutes one EPUB Dictionary, and the English to French dictionary constitutes another EPUB Dictionary.

EPUB Glossary
A glossary in an EPUB Publication that a Reading System can use to look up terms locally in that Publication. It consists of all the glossary content in the Publication and at least one accompanying Search Key Map Document linking search keys to Content Document locations.

An EPUB Glossary is always a component of a larger Publication. While the word “glossary” can occur in a Publication’s title, if such a Publication consists primarily of terms and definitions that would be useful outside this Publication, then that Publication is an EPUB Dictionary rather than an EPUB Glossary for purposes of this specification.

headword
A word or compound word defined, translated, or otherwise treated in an entry.
lookup
A search in a dictionary or glossary for a user-provided word or phrase. The word or phrase can be provided by either selecting text while reading or inputting text into a search field.

The context of a lookup typically differs between dictionaries and glossaries, especially when the word or phrase is provided by selecting text while reading. A glossary can only be used within its Publication, while a dictionary can be used while reading any Publication. In both cases, the dictionary entry or glossary term matching the lookup is retrieved by the Reading System and rendered to the user, typically in a separate viewport.

monolingual dictionary
A dictionary whose headwords, definitions, and other entry content are in the same language.
multilingual dictionary
A dictionary in which the meanings of words in a source language are translated into two or more target languages, and which may cover either one translation direction (English to Japanese and Chinese, for example) or two or more such directions (English to Japanese and Chinese, Japanese to Chinese and English, and Chinese to Japanese and English).
parent context
A property [EPUB301] carried by the nearest ancestor element being semantically inflected [ContentDocs30], either implicitly or explicitly via the epub:type attribute.
result form
The form of a search key that is displayed in a result list following a user lookup.
search key
A word or phrase to be matched during a lookup in an EPUB Dictionary or EPUB Glossary. A search key can be mapped to a glossary term, dictionary entry, or location within a dictionary entry using the Search Key Map Document.
Search Key Map Document
An XML document that links search keys to entries in an EPUB Dictionary or to defined terms in an EPUB Glossary.
source language
The language of entry headwords and phrases.
target language
The language of entry content that translates, defines, or otherwise explains the meanings of headwords and phrases.