Classification of dictionaries Linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different categories by different criteria

Classification of dictionaries
Linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different categories by different criteria.
1. According to the scope of their word-list linguistic dictionaries are divided into general and restricted. The terms general and restricted do not refer to the size of the dictionary or to the number of items listed. What is meant is that the former contains lexical units in ordinary use with this or that proportion of items from various spheres of life, while the latter make their choice only from a certain part of the word-stock, the restriction being based on any principle determined by the compiler.
General dictionaries represent the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope and the bulk of the book in question. The group includes the volumes of The Oxford English Dictionary alongside with any miniature pocket dictionary. Some general dictionaries may have very specific aims and still be considered general due to their coverage. They include, for instance, frequency dictionaries. Dictionaries of word-frequency inform the user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech, to be more exact in the corpus of the reading matter or in the stretch of oral speech on which the word-counts are based (e.g. A Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English by Mark Davies, Dee Gardner).
Restricted dictionaries cover only a certain specific part of the vocabulary. Restricted dictionaries can be subdivided depending on whether the words are chosen according to the sphere of human activity in which they are used (1), the type of the units themselves (2) or the relations existing between them (3). The first subgroup registers and explains technical terms for various branches of knowledge (medical, linguistic, economical terms, etc.). The second subgroup deals with specific language units, i.e. with phraseological units, abbreviations, neologisms, borrowings, toponyms, dialectal words, proverbs and sayings. The third subgroup contains a formidable array of synonymic dictionaries. Dictionaries recording the complete vocabulary of some author are called concordances – a list of words used in a body of work, with their immediate contexts: they should be distinguished from those that deal only with difficult words, i.e. glossaries. The example of concordance
Yesterday, the authorities went one step further. In Stavropol, where Mr Andropov was born in a railway siding in 1914, (Leeds collection of English corpora).
2. According to the information they provide all linguistic dictionaries fall into two groups: explanatory and specialized.