Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian

The Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian (Didysis lietuvių kalbos žodynas or Akademinis lietuvių kalbos žodynas) is a comprehensive thesaurus of the Lithuanian language and one of the most extensive lexicographical works in the world. The 20 volumes encompassing 22,000 pages were published between 1941 and 2002 by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. An online and a CD version was made available in 2005. It contains about 236,000 headwords, or 500,000 if counting sub-headwords, reflecting modern and historical language both from published texts since the first published book in 1547 until 2001 and recorded from the vernacular. Definitions, usage notes, and examples are given for most words. The entry length varies from one sentence to almost a hundred pages. For example, 46 pages are devoted to 298 different meanings of taisyti (to fix) and its derivatives.

History
Lithuanian philologist Kazimieras Būga started collecting material for a dictionary in 1902. When he returned from Russia to Lithuania in 1920, he started writing a dictionary that would contain all known Lithuanian words as well as hydronyms, toponyms, and surnames. However, he died in 1924 having published only two fascicules with a lengthy introduction and the dictionary up to the word anga. Būga attempted to write down everything that was known to science about each word, including etymology and history. He was critical of his own efforts realizing that the dictionary was not comprehensive or consistent, and considered the publication to be only a "draft" of a better dictionary in the future.

Būga collected about 600,000 index cards with words, but Juozas Balčikonis, who was selected by the Ministry of Education to continue the work on the dictionary in 1930, realized that more data is needed and organized a campaign to collect additional words from literary works as well as the spoken language. The focus was on older texts, mostly ignoring contemporary literature and periodicals. Balčikonis asked Lithuanian public (teachers, students, etc.) to record words from the spoken language. Thus, the dictionary was substantially revised and reworked. The revised dictionary excluded proper nouns, infrequently used barbarisms, etymological and historical notes. The words were now explained only in Lithuanian. Būga used to leave the explanation in the language that it was originally recorded; therefore the words could be explained in German, Russian, Polish or even Latin.

The first volume covering letters A and B was published in 1941, i.e. during the occupation by Nazi Germany. The second volume (letters C through F) was published in 1947. These two volumes were attacked by the communists as the words and sample sentences reflected "reactionary clerical phraseology" and not the "Lithuanian revolutionary press and the present Soviet Socialist reality." Balčikonis was removed as the chief editor. It took nine years to revise the dictionary and publish the 3rd volume in 1956. This and subsequent volumes feature numerous quotes from the Lithuanian translations of the works of Lenin, Marx, Engels, Stalin and other Lithuanian communist texts. The first two volumes were also revised and republished based on these new standards in 1968–1969.

With the Perestroika and Lithuania's independence in 1990, Soviet and communist examples were discarded. Examples were added from religious texts and from texts by Lithuanian linguists who retreated west from the approaching Red Army in 1944. The final volume of the dictionary was published in 2002. In total, the dictionary was written by 69 and edited by 23 linguists.

Chief editors
The chief editors of the dictionary were:
 * Juozas Balčikonis (Vols. 1–2 in 1930–1950)
 * Kazys Ulvydas (Vols. 3–5 in 1956–1959, and Vols. 11–16 in 1978–1995)
 * Jonas Kruopas (Vols. 6–10 in 1962–1976, and republished Vols. 1–2 in 1968–1969)
 * Vytautas Vitkauskas (Vols. 17–20 in 1996–2002).