Citing a dictionary with BibTeX

biblatex offers the collection entry type as well as the more specific reference type. Quoting section 2.1.1 of the biblatex manual:

collection

A single-volume collection with multiple, self-contained contributions by distinct authors which have their own title. The work as a whole has no overall author but it will usually have an editor.

Required fields: editor, title, year/date

[...]

reference

A single-volume work of reference such as an encyclopedia or a dictionary. This is a more specific variant of the generic @collection entry type. The standard styles will treat this entry type as an alias for @collection.

Both entry types feature multi-volume variants, mvcollection and mvreference.

Probably many people (myself included) have this problem. I did many Google searches too and just arrived at a partial solution I think will suffice in my case (I needed to reference a particular entry). This is what I ended doing:

1. as I'm using APA style, considered this model:

   Internet. (2009). In Encyclopaedia Britannica (Vol. 20, pp. 81-82). Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

   source:http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/APA/encyclopedia

2. with this in mind, used the following (case-specific, of course):

   @Book{TCDP1999,
       publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
       author = {Rationality.},
       title = {{The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy}},
       year = {1999},
   }
   

   And got:

   Rationality. (1999). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.

I'll let

There is no explicit entry type called @dictionary in BibTeX (or biblatex, AFAICT). However, the entry type @book should provide sufficiently many fields for you to enter the information you need to store. For more on BibTeX's entry types see, e.g., the BibTeX manual.