Glossary Definition

A glossary is a list of terms and their definitions. These terms and definitions can be found at the backs of certain books. It isn’t like a dictionary, where you can find any words, it’s words that are only found in those certain books.

Examples might be textbooks and reference books. A glossary does not have definitions of all words, like a dictionary does. Which makes it different from a dictionary. Where a dictionary will have almost every word in the English language, and it will add new words every year, as new words come into existence.

A glossary is only going to have certain words, and they’re going to be at the back of a certain book, and they’re only going to be words that you can find in that book. It only defines important words within that particular book, and not even all the words in that particular book, but only those which are uncommon or newly introduced.

If it’s a word say, in a science textbook that you were expected to not have seen before, then they’ll give you a definition for it, and it will show up in the glossary. Or if it’s an uncommon word that they wouldn’t expect you to know, or maybe you’ve forgotten it because it’s not a very common word, they may put that one in.

For example, in a science book you may have igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. These will be your three basic types of rocks. If you hadn’t seen those before your glossary would tell you the difference between each of these types of words, or types of rocks, and you could always reference the glossary to find the definitions.

If you were out of that chapter, and you saw the word again, it might not have the definition right there with it, because they would expect you to know it since it isn’t a newly introduced. Since it’s an uncommon word, you can go back to your glossary and find the definition.

Glossary is a handy tool that you can use, but it’s only going to help you on the particular book that you’re looking in.