A dictionary is like a list, but more general. In a list, the index positions have to be integers; in a dictionary, the indices can be (almost) any type. You can think of a dictionary as a mapping between a set of indices (which are called keys) and a set of values. Each key maps to a value. The association of a key and a value is called a key-value pair or sometimes an item. As an example, we’ll build a dictionary that maps from English to Spanish words, so the keys and the values are all strings. The function dict creates a new dictionary with no items. Because dict is the name of a built-in function, you should avoid using it as a variable name.