dict

See also: DICT

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English dicte, from Latin dictum. Doublet of dictum.

Noun

dict (plural dicts)

1. (archaic, rare) A saying; a statement.
   • [c. 1525], [Fernando de Rojas], anonymous translator, A New Cõmodye in Englysh in Maner of an Enterlude Ryght Elygant ⁊ Full of Craft of Rethoryk / Wherein Is Shewd ⁊ Dyscrybyd as Well the Bewte ⁊ Good Propertes of Women […]‎^[1], [London]: Iohẽs rastell […]:

     And accoꝛdyng to theyꝛe dictys reherſyd as thus […]

   • 1609, Tho[mas] Heywood, “Canto. 11.”, in Troia Britanica: Or, Great Britaines Troy. […], London: […] W[illiam] Iaggard, →OCLC, page 265:

     In the deſcription of King Priams ſtate, we must needes imagine it great, where ſo many forraigne Kings aſſembled in his ayde, in whoſe names we haue confer’d Dares, the Troian Dictes, the Greeke Homer, Virgill, and others, who though in ſome particuler thinges (not momentarily they differ) yet they generally concurre in this, that ſuch Princes with ſuch populous and almoſt inuincible aſsiſtance ſuccored Troy.

   • 1656, Edward Reyner, Rules for the Government of the Tongue: Together with Directions in Six Particular Cases. […], 3rd edition, London: […] R. I. for Thomas Newberry, […], published 1658, pages 74–75:

     The fifth and laſt Rule, keep a good and conſtant correſpondence, as between heart and tongue, to ſpeak as yee think (as was ſhewed before) ſo between tongue and hand to do what you ſay, to pay what you vow to God, and perform what you promiſe to men, and to ſay no more to either, than you can and will do, that there may bee an harmony between your words and your works, that as your Tongues are the interpreters of your minds, ſo your hands may bee the Executors of your Tongues, to perform the Dicts and Ingagements thereof. Good language joyned with real performance is (as one ſaith) as a pleaſant ſauce to wholeſome meat.

   • 1861, Charles Reade, chapter XXXV, in The Cloister and the Hearth; or, Maid, Wife, and Widow. A Matter-of-Fact Romance., New York, N.Y.: Rudd & Carleton; London: Trübner & Co., page 90, column 2:

     ‘Nay, my lord, he never was buried.’ / ‘What, the old dict was true after all?’

   • 1965, Robert S. Cox, Jr., The Old English Dicts of Cato and Others‎^[2], →OCLC

Etymology 2

Alternative forms

• dict.

Noun

dict (plural dicts)

1. (chiefly computing, informal) Clipping of dictionary.
   • 2005 January 26, Jutta Wrage, “Debian Dictionary”, in linux.debian.doc‎^[3] (Usenet):

     I did not see the message from Joe, when I began to make another attempt to collect a multilingual dict, which is now is included in the Debian Women Project [4] and in my homepage [5]. […] There currently are three sorts of dicts:
     - The acronym dict
     - Translations from and to English languages
     - Monolingual Dictionaries with explanations of words or phrases.

   • 2013 May 28, Dan Goodin, “Anatomy of a hack: even your ’complicated’ password is easy to crack”, in Wired‎^[4], San Francisco, C.A.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-12-27:

     Other times, they combine words from one big dictionary with words from a smaller one. Steube was able to crack "momof3g8kids" because he had "momof3g" in his 111 million dict and "8kids" in a smaller dict.

Middle French

Verb

dict

1. past participle of dire
2. third-person singular present indicative of dire