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A long time ago, I dropped by a session of a creative writing course where the teacher brought a lot of reference books. One of them was a lovely picture/sketch-based identification dictionary. There were vivid drawings of a Regency ballroom, and each of the items in the room had a tag that showed their name. There were also lots of other things -- wardrobe and coats with all their parts named, obscure house parts, etc. No idea what it's called.

I've been trying to find a good subject-based visual dictionary like that. I often don't know how to describe a particular furniture or clothing item exactly, and it would be lovely to just be able to look up a picture, then read the tag that points to the name of the item in the picture!

ina
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What you remember was possibly one of the DK visual dictionaries, which are brilliantly done and quite memorable. (I have the DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary on my bookshelf as I write this.)

The is also a Facts on File Visual Dictionary, sitting right beside the Oxford.

Alan Gilbertson
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EDIT
I found a current hard-copy version of the Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary. 2010 Merriam-Webster's VISUAL Dictionary in English for all ages (cover image) In fact, it IS suited for all ages and audiences. This includes children, adults and even medical students and physicians, I was surprised to find, based on this post (Cases Medical and Health Blog):

The new Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary incorporates thousands of color illustrations organized by subject area... useful to patients and students. The full-color pictorial images are grouped into chapters outlining major themes such as:

  • Earth
  • Plants & gardening
  • Animal kingdom
  • Human beings
  • Food & kitchen
  • Clothing & accessories
  • Arts & architecture
  • Communications
  • Transportation & machinery
  • Science
  • Sports & games

I really like the Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary. The online version is the only one I am familiar with, although I believe it is available in print. It is free to access online, as far as I can tell.

There is also a Visual Thesaurus, but that is more about diagramming word relationships using network-style visualization. The Visual Dictionary Online is definitely focused on pictures and images, just as you described.

Ellie K
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They used to be called 'Illustrated Dictionaries' as I remember from a long time ago. Today, though, it's only the children's dictionaries that one more often sees richly illustrated.

Why, even Google has the two distinct: 'Search Images' & 'Search Web', which I find pretty disconcerting most of the time.

Kris
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