1.
a dictionary in which English headwords are defined and translated into Japanese
A bilingual dictionary used by Japanese speakers to look up English words. The headwords are in English, with Japanese translations, pronunciations, and example sentences. Standard reference tool for Japanese learners of English.
If there's a word you don't know, try looking it up in an English-Japanese dictionary.
Recently, more and more people are using English-Japanese dictionaries as smartphone apps.
Composed of 英 (English) + 和 (Japanese, in the Sino-Japanese sense of "Japan") + 辞典 (dictionary). The compound is read without any special connecting morphemes, and the ordering — source language first, target language second — matches the direction of lookup: English → Japanese.
Common collocations
- 英和辞典を引く: to consult an English-Japanese dictionary
- 英和辞典で調べる: to look up in an English-Japanese dictionary
- 英和辞典を買う: to buy an English-Japanese dictionary
- 学習英和辞典: a learner's English-Japanese dictionary
- 電子英和辞典: an electronic English-Japanese dictionary
Parallel dictionary types
- 和英辞典: Japanese-English dictionary (headwords in Japanese, definitions in English)
- 国語辞典: a monolingual Japanese dictionary
- 漢和辞典: a Chinese character dictionary (kanji headwords, Japanese definitions)
- 英英辞典: an English-English dictionary (monolingual English)
- 仏和辞典: a French-Japanese dictionary
- 独和辞典: a German-Japanese dictionary
The pattern [Source Language] + 和 + 辞典 is extremely productive: any bilingual dictionary translating into Japanese follows it.
Cultural note
For decades, a paper 英和辞典 was a standard possession of every Japanese junior high and high school student. In recent years, electronic dictionaries (電子辞書) and smartphone apps have largely replaced the paper versions, but the word 英和辞典 remains in common use regardless of the medium.