PAGES : Every Picture Tells Its Story

Say the words echinus, mutule and acroterion and people are liable to ask where it hurts. But these aren’t bones or body parts; they are elements in the classical Greek Doric column.

The curious can find them on Page 167 of the new “Macmillan Visual Dictionary” ($40; $45 after Jan. 1). This 862-page volume with 3,500 color illustrations is the latest in a genre that can be traced to 18th-Century France and Diderot’s encyclopedia. This version, made possible by computer-generated graphics, is a product of linguists at Montreal’s Editions Quebec-Amerique whose goal was to help French Canadians learn English and French technical terms.

The English edition contains 25,000 terms on 600 subjects in categories ranging from gardening to nuclear energy, sports to furniture. The images often include breakaway diagrams. A comprehensive index allows the reader to search by category, word or image.

The book is an update of the 1986 black-and-white “Visual Dictionary,” still in print, which was published in New York by Facts on File. While many of the terms are similar, the images are entirely new.

“The project was driven by technology,” said publisher William Rosen. “Computer technology has gone through several generations since 1986.”