Entry Selection

The Dictionary of Energy contains about 8100 main entries and about 10,000 entries in all. It is our belief that this entry selection provides a fully comprehensive description of the vocabulary currently used in the field of energy.

In order for a word to qualify for inclusion in the Dictionary, it has to be either a term that is specific to one or more of the subject areas of energy covered in the book (see discussion of Subject Areas following), or it has to be a gen-eral term that has a specialized use in energy (e.g., the use of the terms sweet and sour to describe oil and gas components). It also has to be sufficiently qualified in terms of two criteria, frequency and range. Frequency is the sheer number of times that the term occurs in the literature, and range is the variety of reputable sources in which it appears.

Entry Sources

A dictionary of this size draws its entry list from a vast number of sources. Important sources for this book include other reference works in the field; in particular we made an exhaustive study of the vocabulary employed by the hundreds of authors who appear in the six-volume Encyclopedia of Energy (2004). We also examined existing energy dictionaries and glossaries, books on energy, scientific journals dealing with energy topics, and many energy-related Websites, both scholarly and popular.

Subject Areas

In the planning stage of the Dictionary...