A good dictionary not only gives you the meanings of words; it can help you in more ways than that. Al-mufid, as a learning dictionary, is intended to help you in many ways:
1. Pronouncing the word. Between bars you have the way in which a word is pronounced. If only one pronounciation is given, it means that there is one normal way of pronouncing the word in the English-speaking world.If two pronounciations are given, separated by a comma (eg. class/klas/,/klaes/), then the first pronounciation is British and the second is American. If two pronounciations are separated by or,either may be used in any area where English is spoken. If the alternative way of pronounciing a word includes a change in only part of the word, only that part is given. A list of pronounciation symbols is given on the inside of the front and back covers.
One other feature of pronounciation is stress.In this dictionary, the stressed syllable is shown by a stress mark just before the vowel in the stresses syllabl.
2. Giving the meanings of the word. One or more meaning are given in Arabic following the various parts of speech. The main meanings of a word are numbered. The common idiomatic expressions and proverbs are also included with their Arabic meanings. The Arabic words are diacriticalized ( with vowel marksحركات التثك ) to help you have a better command of Arabic.
3. Illustrating the meaningsin examples. For most of the meanings given, there are examples to tell you more about what the word means and to show you how it is used in a sentance. In many cases more than one sentence is given in order to show the different forms in which the word can be used.
4. Giving the part of speech to which the word belongs plus other grammatical information about it. The various parts of speech ( noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) of a word are indicated by abbreviated forms in italics; for example, v for verb, adj for adjective and n for noun. A list of the abbreviations used throughout this dictionary follows the list of pronounciation symbols on the inside of the covers. The parts of speech are followed by any irregular plural forms for nouns, irregular past and past participle forms of verbs, and irregular comparative and superlative forms of adjective.
5. Illustration in pictures. Hundreds of illustrations have been introduced to help give an exact idea of what the words mean. It is said that a picture is sometimes worth a hundred words. Moreover, illustrations make a dictionary more interesting to refer to.
6. Dividing the word. The dots between the letters tell you how you can divide a word with hyphens if the word occurs at the end of a line and part of it must be written on the next line. For example, the word bab.ble can be divided into two parts: bab and ble; any other way of dividing this word would not be correct.
The words defined in this Dictionary are listed in alphabetical order. You are advised to learn this order. Related words and derivatives are entered under the main word. It might be of help to remember that words beginning with the letter M make up the middle pages of the dictionary.
To help you find the words quickly, guidewords are placed to the left or right top side of a page indicating the first or last entry on that page; for instance, bright is the last word on page 61, and brighten is the first word on page 62.
If you know how to use this dictionary properly, you will learn many things ( other than the meanings of words ) that would help you towards a greater mastery of both the English language and the Arabic language. You will also develop the scholarly habit of using dictionaries in the course of your everyday life.