Language Dictionaries Online: A Guide

More language dictionaries are becoming available online all the time. The ease and speed of use, the authority of the online titles we subscribe to, and the extra services available online all argue for use of the online product whenever it's at hand. Resources the Cornell University Library subscribes to--not necessarily available free on the Internet--are labelled thus: .

For further information or to locate titles not listed here, always feel free to consult the reference staff.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 4th ed. New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 2003.

(Library Gateway)

Contains over 350,000 entries and meanings. Word definitions are further enhanced by examples of use, usage notes and a newly revised appendix of Indo-European roots. Audio pronunciations of headwords. Part of the Credo Reference collection.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. (including M-W Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus)

(Library Gateway)

The online equivalent of the print version of this standard college dictionary and thesaurus. Audio pronunciations of all headwords. Site also has Word of the Day feature with the definition, example sentence, audio pronunciation, and word history section. You can subscribe to the e-mail version or just check the site. Current year archived.

Oxford American Dictionary of Current English. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

(Library Gateway)

As the title implies, limited to words in use now; archaic, obsolete, and obscure words or word senses are excluded.

The Oxford English Dictionary.

(Library Gateway)

The premier historical dictionary of the English language. Entries for each sense of the word are illustrated with quotations from the full extent of written English.
The extensive Help section includes links to the abbreviations used and bibliography of the Second Edition.
"The OED presents in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectical usage and slang. This online edition contains the complete A to Z sequence of the Second Edition, its three-volume Additions Series, and also draft material from the revision programme, which represents the latest progress towards the Third Edition." More about the OED.

Oxford Reference Online: English Language Reference

(Library Gateway)

Access to The Oxford Dictionary of Abbreviations, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language, A New Dictionary of Eponyms, The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English, The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, and Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage.

Webster's Third New International, Unabridged. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1993.

(Library Gateway)

Located on the Individual Collections page of LION, this a searchable electronic version of the 1993 edition. The premier unabridged, American dictionary of the English language containing 450,000 vocabulary entries. Used as the basis for Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionaries.

Word Spy

(Library Gateway)

An excellent source of newly coined words, existing words that have been revived, and older words that are being used in new ways. Like the OED, Word Spy provides illustrative quotations of the words cited.

Oxford Reference Online: Bilingual Dictionaries

(Library Gateway)

Concise or Pocket versions of French, Spanish, German and Italian bilingual dictionaries online. See Xreferplus (next entry) for full versions.

Xreferplus: Bilingual Dictionaries

(Library Gateway)

Full versions of Collins French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Latin bilingual dictionaries online; also Business French, German, and Spanish. The best online resource for these languages.

ARTFL Project: The ARTFL Reference Collection. University of Chicago.

(Library Gateway)

The Reference Collection of ARTFL [Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language] contains a rich set online historical and modern language dictionaries.
Highlights:
Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française. First Edition (1694)
Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française. Fourth Edition (1762)
Jean-François Féraud's Dictionaire critique de la langue française (1787)
Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française. Fifth Edition (1798)
Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française. Sixth Edition (1835)
Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française. Eighth Edition (1932-35)
Le Trésor de la Langue Française (TLFi) Dictionary.
Dictionarium latinogallicum (1552).
Digital Dictionaries of South Asia.

Database of Latin Dictionaries. Brepols.

Click the "Enter databases" button and select this title from the Latin Dictionaries section. The purpose of The Database of Latin Dictionaries "is to produce for scholars and students an online database comprising a large number of Latin dictionaries. The database will continue to grow gradually and will comprise three kinds of dictionaries: dictionaries to assist translation from Latin into modern languages, dictionaries providing semantic and etymological explanations in Latin of Latin words and historical Latin dictionaries." [from DLD database INFO]

Dictionary of Old English, Old English Corpus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1998.

(Library Gateway)

The Dictionary of Old English electronic corpus is a complete record of surviving Old English except for some variant manuscripts of individual texts.... A catalogue of the texts included in our corpus is available in Angus Cameron's `"A List of Old English Texts" in A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, ed. R. Frank and A. Cameron (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), pp. 25-306. The full bibliographic information of each text is included with the text which is taken from the Healey-Venezky List of Texts. There are 3037 texts in the corpus. [from the Old English Corpus information page]

Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1998-2001.

(Library Gateway)

The print MED, completed in 2001, has been described as "the greatest achievement in medieval scholarship in America." Its 15,000 pages offer a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind available. This electronic version of the MED preserves all the details of the print MED, but goes far beyond this, by converting its contents into an enormous database, searchable in ways impossible within any print dictionary. [MED home page] The online Middle English Dictionary is part of the Middle English Compendium.

Mittelhochdeutsche Wörterbücher im Verbund. [Trier?]: Thomas Burch, Johannes Fournier, [1999?- .] (aka Mittelhochdeutsch Wörterbüch)

Contents: Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch: mit Benutzung des Nachlasses von Georg Friedrich Benecke / ausgearbeitet von Wilhelm Müller -- Mittelhochdeutsches Handwürterbuch / von Matthias Lexer -- Nachträge zum Mittelhochdeutschen Taschenwörterbuch / unter Mithilfe von Wolfgang Bachofer und Rena Leppin; bearbeitet von Ulrich Pretzel -- Findebuch zum mittelhochdeutschen Wortschatz: mit einem rückläufigen Index / Kurt Gärtner

The Perseus Digital Library: [Reference] Tools and Information. Gregory Crane, editor-in-chief. Medford, MA: Tufts University.

A remarkable collection of Greek and Latin language dictionaries and tools enhanced with links to the original texts. Classics consists only a portion of resources available through the Perseus Digital Library.

Dictionary Entry Lookup.
Search the headwords of Greek and Latin dictionaries.

Other reference tools available in Perseus:

English Index.
Search all English text in the Perseus digital library.

English to Greek Word Search.
This allows you to search the English definitions in LSJ [Liddell, Scott, Jones. A Greek-English Lexicon.]

English to Latin Word Search.
This allows you to search the English definitions in Lewis and Short [Lewis, Charlton T., and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary.]

Greek Morphological Analysis.
This tool analyses Greek words and tells you their possible morphological analyses and the dictionary entries from which they could be derived.

Greek Vocabulary Tool.
Generate vocabulary lists for Greek texts.

Greek Words in Context.
Find instances of one or more words appearing in Greek texts. Useful in searching for Greek idioms and phrases.

Latin Morphological Analysis.
This tool analyses Latin words and tells you their possible morphological analyses and the dictionary entries from which they could be derived.

Latin Vocabulary Tool.
Generate vocabulary lists for Latin texts.

Latin Words in Context.
Find instances of one or more words appearing in Latin texts. Useful in searching for Latin idioms and phrases.

1. Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Server: Japanese-English Online Dictionary (Monash University site).
http://etext.virginia.edu/wwwjdic/wwwjdic.html

This online dictionary includes a Japanese-English dictionary, translation of Japanese text, and a kanji dictionary. To use this dictionary you will need to be able to display Japanese kana and kanji on your computer. The site gives information on setting up Japanese fonts on your browser.

2. Sanseido Web Dictionary
http://www.sanseido.net

This site allows you to do a simultaneous search of three dictionaries: a kokugo (Japanese language), ei-wa (English-Japanese), and a wa-ei (Japanese-English), all "Daily Concise" editions published by Sanseido. To use, you will need Japanese fonts on your computer.

3. Rikai
http://www.rikai.com

Rikai is a translation site for Japanese to English, English to Japanese, English to Spanish, and Chinese to English. It can be used to read Japanese kanji. It allows you to paste a URL or text into its translator and it will give you the reading and definition for the words once you move your mouse over them. To use, you will need Japanese fonts on your computer.

4. Digital Dictionary of Buddhism
http://www.acmuller.net/ddb/index.html

This dictionary covers words found in canonical sources of Buddhism throughout Asia. You can search by East Asian language character with radical, number of strokes, or romanized terms. It includes Buddhist terms, texts, people, temples, schools, and places, all divided by country and can be searched by these subjects as well. Use is limited with a total of 20 searches as a guest in a 24-hour period. Unlimited use may be provided on a semester basis to university courses where the database appears in a course syllabus.

Emoticons ~ Chat Shorthand. [Computer-User High-Tech Dictionary]

Are emoticons language? If they are, here's a free online dictionary. (Emoticons are representations of facial expressions made by a certain series of keystrokes, usually producing an image of a face sideways, widely used in e-mail and chat messages.) Chat shorthand? Mainly acronyms of frequently used phrases.

Urban Dictionary: Define Your World.

"Urban Dictionary is a slang dictionary with your definitions." Extensive source of current slang.

Wordsmith.org

Source for two services: A.Word.A.Day and Internet Anagram Server. A.Word.A.Day provides a new word every day with the definition, illustrative quotations, and audio pronunciation. You can subscribe to the e-mail version or just check the site. Archived back to 1994.