Lexicography is a science about dictionaries The term dictionary is

used to denote a book listing words of a language and dealing with their
meanings, pronunciation, origin, or other aspects.
The history of English lexicography dates back to the Old English period
when religious books were translated from Latin and lists of selected
Englisn-Latin equivalents – glossaries – were made up. In the Middle
Ages and the Renaissanse appeared Latin-English and English-Latin
dictionaries based on the alphabetical principle. The first monolingual
dictionary – A Table Alphabetical (A Table Alphabetical,
containing and teaching the true writing, and understanding of
hard English words, borrowed from Hebrew, Greek, Latin or
French, etc.) –by Robert Cawdrey was published in 1604. Among
the earliest dictionaries we also find John Bullokar’s An English
Expositor (толкователь) (1616), Henry Cockeram’s The English
Dictionary (1623). The turning point in the history of English
lexicography was achieved when Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the
English Language was published in 1747. It was the most comprehensive
dictionary of the language with etymologies, complete and clear
definitions,
Modern dictionaries are divided into types according to their contents.
There are general and special dictionaries.
General dictionaries deal with the words of a language as a whole.
General dictionaries may be subdivided according to the language of
description into monolingual and bilingual [bai] or multilingual. To
monolingual we refer all types of explanatory dictionaries.
We also refer to general dictionaries translating dictionaries, such as
English-Russian, Russian-English
Special dictionaries cover only a specific part of the vocabulary
Special dictionaries may be subdivided according to the sphere of
human activity in which they are used: technical dictionaries, medical
dictionaries, dictionaries of law terms, etc; dialect dictionaries, dictionaries
of slang.
We distinguish dictionaries of foreign words, phraseological
dictionaries, dictionaries of new words, of obsolete words, dictionaries of
synonyms, antonyms, abbreviations, proverbs, quotations