A curated list of business terms and their agreed-upon definitions, used to ensure consistent understanding of data and concepts across an organization.
A business glossary is a governance tool that resolves ambiguity. When different departments use the same term to mean different things — or different terms to mean the same thing — analysis and reporting become unreliable. A business glossary establishes the official definition of each term and who owns it.
A business glossary is distinct from a data dictionary. A data dictionary describes the technical structure of a dataset (field names, types, formats). A business glossary defines the business meaning of concepts, regardless of how they are stored technically.
Example: A city's finance department defines "active account" as any account with a transaction in the last 12 months. The IT department defines it as any account with a non-null status field. These conflicting definitions cause reporting discrepancies. The business glossary establishes the official definition — the finance department's — and all systems and reports must align with it.