How to Cite a Dictionary or Encyclopedia in MLA & APA (Examples)

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated July 7, 2026

Dictionary and encyclopedia entries break the pattern every other citation follows: there is usually no author to lead with, often no date, and the “title” is a single word. So people guess — they lead with the publisher, italicize the headword, or worst of all, click the site’s built-in “Cite this Entry” button and paste its output in without checking it. Merriam-Webster’s own “Citing the Dictionary” help page still shows pre-2016 MLA and pre-APA-7 formats, so trusting the site blindly can leave you two handbook editions out of date. The actual rules are simple and official: the MLA Style Center has answered every common dictionary question directly, and APA Style has a dedicated dictionary-entry page. This guide covers both, plus encyclopedias, with one real entry formatted side by side in all seven styles.

The shortest answer: in MLA, the headword in quotation marks stands in the author-less first slot, the dictionary’s name is the italicized container, then the publisher, the date, and the page number or URL. “Semantics.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semantics. Accessed 4 July 2026. In-text, cite the headword: (“Semantics”).

What counts as a dictionary or encyclopedia

The unit you cite is one entry — one headword in a dictionary, one article in an encyclopedia. If you use three entries, you write three citations; the MLA Style Center is explicit that each encyclopedia entry is cited separately, not the encyclopedia as a whole. Everything on this page applies to that unit, print or online, general or specialist.

Some reference-shaped sources are better cited as something else:

• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but both styles give it special handling — MLA’s own unsigned-entry example is a Wikipedia article, and APA has a separate rule about citing the archived version. See how to cite Wikipedia.
• A signed entry in a specialist encyclopedia — a scholarly article with a named author in something like Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia — is cited author-first, like a chapter in an edited book. The format is below.
• A definition box in Google search results should not be cited at all. The MLA Style Center’s answer is to “use an established print or electronic dictionary” instead — the box is an unattributed excerpt, and the same goes for your word processor’s built-in dictionary.
• A reference page that is really just a webpage — a glossary on a company site, a study-guide definition — follows the ordinary website format.

If it is an entry with a headword in an established dictionary or encyclopedia, this page applies.

Information to collect before you cite

Open the entry itself, not the search results page, and copy:

• The headword, capitalized as a title — plus any part-of-speech label, e.g. “Content, N.” Dictionaries print the headword lowercase (“content”); MLA capitalizes it in headline style, like any title of source.
• The definition number — if the word has several numbered senses and you are using one, note which: def. 4, or def. 1.b.
• The dictionary or encyclopedia name — as the site or title page gives it now. Online Britannica brands itself simply Britannica; the print set is Encyclopedia Britannica; Britannica Academic is a separate database.
• The edition — 11th ed., 2nd ed. Critical for print, often absent online.
• The publisher — Merriam-Webster, Oxford University Press. In APA you drop it when it duplicates the group author.
• The date — the copyright year for print, the “last updated” date if the entry shows one. Many online dictionary entries show none; that is what access and retrieval dates are for.
• Page number (print) or the entry’s own URL (online) — the page that shows the single headword, e.g. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semantics.
• The date you accessed it — MLA wants it when the entry is undated; APA requires a retrieval date for continuously updated entries; Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, IEEE, and AMA all want an access date for online sources.

The generator at / pulls the headword, site name, and URL from a pasted entry link. Double-check the definition number and edition by hand — no metadata field carries them.

One entry, formatted in all seven styles

The entry below is the one APA Style uses in its own official dictionary-entry guidance, so the APA row is authoritative rather than constructed.

The source: The entry for “semantics” in the online Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. No named author, no posted date — the publisher, Merriam-Webster, acts as author where a style needs one. URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semantics. Accessed July 4, 2026.

Two structural decisions split the styles. The first is who counts as the author. MLA says nobody: the entry is unsigned, so the headword in quotation marks leads and the citation alphabetizes under S. APA promotes the organization to group author — Merriam-Webster — and, because the group author and the publisher are the same, the name appears in the author element only, never repeated as publisher.

The second is what to do about the missing date. MLA skips the date element and closes with an access date. APA writes (n.d.) and adds a retrieval date, because the entry can change silently. And Chicago opts out of the reference list entirely: CMOS 18 cites well-known reference works like Merriam-Webster, Britannica, and the OED in notes only, with no bibliography entry — the Chicago row above is that note, which points to the entry with “under” (the 18th edition’s plain-English replacement for the old Latin “s.v.”). Harvard and Vancouver have no single official body, so the rows above show the common institutional pattern their webpage rules produce.

In-text, for the same entry:

• MLA: (“Semantics”) — the headword, in quotation marks; one sense is (“Semantics,” def. 1)
• APA: (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) or narrative Merriam-Webster (n.d.)
• Chicago: the footnote above, or in author-date papers a parenthetical version of it — no bibliography entry either way
• Harvard: (Semantics, no date)
• Vancouver, AMA: (1) or superscript ¹ — name the defined word in your prose
• IEEE: [1]

How to cite a dictionary in MLA

The MLA Style Center’s rule is that there is no special rule: “Cite an entry in a reference work the way you would cite any source: follow the MLA format template.” For an unsigned dictionary entry, the MLA 9 works-cited template comes out as:

“Headword.” Dictionary Name, edition, Publisher, Year, p. page or URL.

MLA’s official print example, from its post on whether to include a page number when citing a print dictionary:

“Content, N. (4).” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., Merriam-Webster, 2003, p. 269.

And the online counterpart:

“Content, N. (1).” Merriam-Webster Unabridged, 2016, unabridged.merriam-webster.com/collegiate/content.

Read the title slot closely, because it does three jobs at once. The headword is reproduced from the entry but capitalized as a title — the dictionary prints “content” lowercase, and MLA’s headline-style capitalization makes it “Content” — followed by the italicized part-of-speech abbreviation (N.), because the dictionary lists the noun and the verb as separate entries. The definition number in parentheses, (4), pins the citation to the one sense you used. If you are citing the entry as a whole rather than one sense, the bare headword is enough: “Semantics.” Yes, you include the page number for a print dictionary — MLA answered that question directly — and the URL serves as the location for an online one.

The in-text citation is the first element of the entry: (“Content”), or with the sense specified, (“Content,” def. 4.1.b). If you cite the same headword from two different dictionaries, disambiguate with the dictionary title in brackets: (“Emoticon” [Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary]).

Encyclopedia entries follow the same template, with the author question deciding the first slot:

A signed entry starts with its author, like a chapter in an edited collection. MLA’s official example (which cites the Google Books copy, so it ends with a second container):

Botterill, Steven N. “Angela Da Foligno, Saint.” Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, edited by Christopher Kleinhenz et al., vol. 1, Routledge, 2004, pp. 35-36. Google Books, books.google.com/.

An unsigned entry starts with the entry title. MLA’s official example is a Wikipedia article:

“Pendragon.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, 15 Dec. 2016, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendragon.

For Britannica, that pattern gives: “Solid.” Britannica, 30 May 2024, www.britannica.com/science/solid-state-of-matter. Use the last-updated date the article displays.

How to cite a dictionary in APA

The APA 7 reference template, from APA Style’s “Dictionary entry references” page:

Institution or Author. (Date or n.d.). Headword. In Dictionary name. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL

The official example, verbatim:

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Semantics. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved January 4, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semantics

The rules behind it: Merriam-Webster is a group author, so it fills the author slot; and “because entries in the APA Dictionary of Psychology and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary are updated over time and are not archived,” APA says to “include a retrieval date in the reference.” The date is (n.d.) because the entry shows none, the headword sits plain in the title position, and the dictionary name is italicized after “In”. Since the group author and the publisher are the same organization, the name appears in the author element only. Note there is no period after the URL.

In-text: parenthetical (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) or narrative Merriam-Webster (n.d.).

Print dictionary. APA’s rule is to provide any edition information in parentheses, without italics, after the dictionary title, with the entry’s page number in the same parentheses, separated by a comma:

Merriam-Webster. (2003). Content. In Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (11th ed., p. 269).

This print format is official too: APA Style’s dictionary-entry page gives its own print example — Merriam-Webster. (2003). Litmus test. In Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (11th ed., p. 727). — and the entry above simply swaps in the “content” entry.

Encyclopedia entry (Britannica). Same template, with a real date replacing (n.d.) because Britannica articles display a last-updated date — and a dated entry needs no retrieval date:

Britannica. (2024, May 30). Solid. In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/solid-state-of-matter

Use (n.d.) plus a retrieval date only when the entry is continuously updated with no archived or dated version. A signed encyclopedia entry starts with its author’s name instead of the organization, and everything else stays put.

Edge cases

Check the site’s own “cite this” output before trusting it. Merriam-Webster’s “Citing the Dictionary” help page still shows citations in pre-2016 MLA format — “Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2011. Web. 8 May 2011.” — and a pre-APA-7 format to match. That “Web.” plus double-date pattern is MLA 7, two handbook editions out of date, and pasting it into a 2026 works-cited list is an instant tell. The per-entry “Cite this Entry” widget and Britannica’s Cite button track the current editions more closely, but any citation they generate is still worth checking against the templates above. Borrow only the facts; build the citation yourself.

The dictionary rebranded or moved. Cite the name and URL the source uses now, not the one from an old citation you found. Online Britannica now brands itself simply Britannica at britannica.com, while Britannica Academic is a separate library database whose proxy URLs your reader cannot follow — cite the public article when you have a choice. The Oxford English Dictionary lives at oed.com with new per-entry URLs; check that a copied OED link still resolves.

Several numbered definitions. Cite the sense you actually used. MLA puts the definition number in the title slot — “Content, N. (4).” — and in-text as (“Content,” def. 4.1.b). APA has no numbered-definition machinery; name the sense in your prose (“in the fourth sense of the word…”) and let the reference identify the entry.

Same headword, different dictionaries. MLA disambiguates in-text with the dictionary title in brackets: (“Emoticon” [Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary]) versus (“Emoticon” [OED]). APA rarely has this problem, because the group authors — (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) and (Oxford University Press, n.d.) — usually already differ; if two undated works do share a group author, APA tells them apart as (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-a) and (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b).

Well-known versus specialist reference works in Chicago. CMOS 18 splits the category: household-name references (Merriam-Webster, Britannica, the OED) get a note only, no bibliography entry; a substantial signed entry in a specialist encyclopedia is treated like a book chapter, with a full bibliography entry under the entry author’s name. If your Chicago paper leans on the Botterill entry above, it belongs in the bibliography; the definition of “semantics” does not.

”Can I even cite a dictionary?” Yes — when the definition is evidence. Distinguishing two senses of a contested term, tracking when a word entered the language, quoting the exact wording of a legal or medical definition: all legitimate, all citable. What earns the red ink is the filler opener that quotes a definition nobody disputes. And cite an established dictionary: MLA’s guidance on Google’s definition boxes is to skip them and go to the dictionary itself.

The principle underneath all of it: a reference entry is cited like any other source, just with the headword standing in for the missing author and an access or retrieval date standing in for the missing publication date. Get those two substitutions right and every style on this page falls into place.

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