Abstract:This paper is a research on Arabic lexicography. It provides a brief history plus the linguistic principles and subjects that are applicable in Arabic lexicography. This paper further discusses the differences between the traditional and contemporary lexicography, the group activities that are required for writing a contemporary dictionary or a glossary, and different dictionary designs based on entries and subentries. Additional subjects discussed in this paper include comparisons between dictionary types based on volume and number of entries, specialized or general applications, number of languages it covers, unidirectional or bidirectional dictionary, and types of references made to the subentries taken from old dictionaries
