The online version of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English has a new feature: topics. These are presented in the form of word clouds. Here's the one for marketing and advertising:
There is also a collection of widgets including this one:
Of course, Google has always been a great resource for finding the meaning of words, but now they've got their own dictionary—or rather 28 dictionaries, because that's how many languages are featured, including Kannada and Telugu. Here's what I got when I looked up 'aardvark' in the English-English dictionary.
As you can see, you get a basic definition along with some pictures and the pronunciation in both American and British English—plus the phonetic transcription. However, this isn't the case with all words. For 'caterpillar' there were no pictures and no spoken examples, though there was a synonym ('grub'). Another useful feature is 'Starred words'. Just click on the star beside the word and the term is stored in your Google account if are logged in. Very useful for learners who want to expand their vocabulary. And, as before, you still get definitions from other sources on the web.
COMMENTS
1. Having to open the dictionary in your browser and then enter the word is still a bit of a drag. I like the option you have on this blog (courtesy of Answers.com) of just double-clicking on a word to see the definition.
2. Learners of English should also check out the online dictionaries from the likes of Longman, Macmillan and Oxford to see how they compare.
READ MORE
• Google quietly rolls out dictionary (LA Times)
• Google enters the word game with its own dictionary (Mashable)
• Google replaces Answers.com with Google Dictionary (Google Operating System)
FOOTNOTE
I've since noticed that Google's definitions are taken from the Collins Cobuild Advanced Dictionary.
Word lovers will be interested in the Daily Telegraph's article about the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, which was published yesterday. At nearly 4,500 pages and costing £250, the HTE won't be on many people's Christmas lists, but you can search a limited number of sections for synonyms on the HTE Test Website. Here's an extract from the Telegraph's piece to whet your appetite:
"Cinema" – in the sense of the venue for film screenings – is first attested in 1913, five years after "picture palace". "Movie house" can be spotted the following year, "nickelodeon" in 1921. "Ticket-chopper" first makes an appearance in 1915, "usherette" in 1925, and "drive-in" in 1950 – two years later than "ozoner", an American slang term for the drive-in cinema. We find that "cinema" was used of a film show in 1909, seven years after the first sighting of "cinematograph". "Sneak preview" was in use as a noun as early as 1938, and as a verb from 1950. "Film festival" does not put in an appearance until 1951, the year that Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca opened the first Berlin International Film Festival.
FURTHER READING
• OUP Blog
Julia Angwin poses an interesting question in an article in the Wall Street Journal:
Do we still need dictionaries in the age of Google?
Dictionaries are, after all, giant databases of words compiled by lexicographers who investigate word usages and meanings.
These days, however, Google is our database of meaning. Want to know how to spell assiduous? Type it incorrectly and Google will reply, in its kind-hearted way: "Did you mean: assiduous"? Why yes, Google, I did.
Google then spits out a bunch of links to Web definitions for assiduous. Without clicking on any of them, the two-sentence summaries below each link give me enough to get a sense of the word: "hard working," and "diligent."
Still not satisfied? Fine, click on the Google "News" tab – and you will be directed to a page of links where the word assiduous appears in news stories. Presto, sample sentences and usage examples.
"You and I can be our own lexicographers now," says Barbara Wallraff, the longtime language columnist for The Atlantic magazine. "We don't need dictionaries." Full article >>
USEFUL TIP
You can get Google to give you a definition of a word by typing "define: word" in the search box.
COMMENT
I agree with the article that Google is a great source of information about words and I use it all the time to check meanings and find examples of words in context. I rarely consult my printed dictionaries any more (except to find definitions for this blog!). As for online dictionaries and dictionary software, they're just too slow if you just want to look up one word. However, I did recently treat myself to an electronic dictionary, which allows you to find definitions and synonyms much more quickly than a printed or online dictionary. It's also very useful for solving crosswords.
From The Guardian:
Merriam-Webster, the revered publishing house known for its texts on American English, released today a sample of more than 100 new words it has granted entry into its Collegiate dictionary this year. Fully a fifth of them relate to technological innovation.
"Vlog" makes its debut, defined as a blog containing video material, as does "webisode", that is a TV show that can be viewed through a website.
Some old expressions have finally made it into Webster years after they were coined, courtesy of renewed digital interest. So "fan fiction" is traceable back to 1944 but the writing of stories by fans involving popular fictional characters has boomed through posts on the web.
Likewise, the use of "sock puppet" to describe a false identity used for deceptive purposes originated in 1959, but its proliferation on the internet has given it new life. And "flash mobs" (1987) - crowds that descend on a designated location to perform an event have now become so common thanks to email and text message, that the phrase has now earned its place in the dictionary. Full story >>
COMMENTS
All the "new words" mentioned in this extract were already in Wikipedia. Not bad for a source that is often criticised for being unauthoritative and unreliable. (I'm a Wikipedia fan, in case you hadn't noticed.)
French speakers should appreciate this article by Charles Bremner in which he discusses some of the new words and expressions which have been included in the latest edition of Le Petit Larousse, a well-known French dictionary.
The Petit Larousse is serious and known for its fine illustrations but it is not set in stone like the dictionary of the august Académie Française, the official guardian of the language. It keeps pace with trends and mirrors the prevailing culture. So it's always interesting to note the new expressions and the people whom it adds to its new editions. The arrivals this year include Audrey Tautou, Barack Obama and George Clooney.
The inclusion of show-biz personalities is part of "la pipolisation" of French life. That word, which means celebrity culture and originated in the 1990s from the US People magazine, is one of 150 new terms in the Larousse dictionary section. There are a few from Belgium, Quebec and other parts, and some, like barré (crazy, eccentric) are current French slang but many, inevitably, have been adopted from American.
They include buzz, burn-out, geek, fantasy (in the sense of Tolkien-style, nordic mythology entertainment), peer-to-peer, caster (meaning to cast in the theatre sense), blacklister (to blacklist), clubbeur/clubbeuse and toxique, in the sense of waste or loans. The new toxique is one of many examples of English usage being overlaid on old French words. Full article >>
The aim of Wordnik is to show as much information as possible for every word in English. "Information," doesn't just mean traditional definitions. This information could be:
Traveljargon.org is a dedicated, interactive portal which aims to provide concise definitions of terms used in the travel industry. Here you'll find the A - Z of terminology, acronyms, and expressions for business or leisure travel, airlines, hotels, car hire, conference and meetings, rail, cruising and tourism. Compiled and continually up-dated by the travel community, Traveljargon.org is free to use.
Grant Barrett, co-host of A Way With Words, one of my favourite podcasts, has made his book The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English ($11.21 on Amazon.com) available for download at no cost. You can get it from his Lexicographer's Rules site.
Since my book The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English is now available on the bootleg e-book sites ("pirate" is the wrong term, I think), I've decided to make it available for download at no cost. [ . . .]
By the way, the way these books get out there is usually simple. Sometimes the files leak from publishers, sometimes from authors, sometimes they're scanned from paper to pixels, etc., etc., Sometimes people pretend to be blind and contact the publisher to ask for a digital copy of a book so they can use it with their screen readers that translate the digital pages into something they can understand. The publisher sends a digital copy and in a few days it's all over the Internet.
COMMENT
It will be interesting to see if Grant's download offer results in increased sales of the hard copy version. I recently read that illegal downloaders of mp3 music buy more CDs than non-downloaders. (I've bought CDs of music I've discovered on Spotify.) Perhaps the same is true for books? After all, I would have thought that there's a much greater incentive to buy a book than there is to buy a CD after downloading the digital version.
Select any word on the list and you'll see a snapshot of the Visual Thesaurus map and definitions for that word, along with examples of the word in your text.
You can read the VocabGrabber press release here.
This is a multi-authored blog discussing the English language today. We explore a wide range of topics related to English as it is spoken around the world and hope to be of interest and relevance to the international community of English speakers. The blog welcomes contributions from guest authors and comments from readers.
The first few articles are very promising. Being a cricket fan, I particularly enjoyed this one.
After 44 years of meticulous study, the Dictionary of American Regional English is nearing completion. But what about Britain's precious local dialects? The Guardian's Stuart Jeffries has done some research:
One day in the village of Embleton in Northumberland, lexicographical researchers heard a local say the following: "I'll dad your lugs." It means, roughly, "I'll give you a clip round the ears." It's significant - isn't it? - that the verb for hitting in this sentence is "dad". If anybody said "I'll mum your lugs" (which I don't believe they have), it would sound more like an endearment.
In the nearby village of Wark, researchers heard another bizarre sentence: "She's got a clew in her bottom." It meant: "She's got a swelling in her bottom." It was said of children who would not sit still.
These expressions were collected by fieldworkers for the Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture (LAVC) when they were compiling a Survey of English Dialects in the 50s. In Stewkley in Buckinghamshire, for example, they found that the local word for a buttercup was "crazy". In Docking, Norfolk, they heard the expression "couldn't stop a pea" and learned that it was said of a bow-legged person. In the delightfully named Staffordshire village of Mow Cop, to have "cocked your toes" meant to have died. In Wiltshire, the hands of a woman that had been in the washtub a long time were called "quobbled" (ie temporarily wrinkly). Full article >>
COMMENTS
Here are some of my favourite regional expressions from the Guardian's A-to-Z:
Interesting article in today's Guardian about the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), which is now nearing completion.
The dictionary, which the writer Tom Wolfe once called "my favourite reading", began life in 1965 under the direction of Frederic Cassidy, an English professor who dispatched researchers to 1,000 American communities to administer questionnaires and make audio recordings.
Some slept in "word wagons" - vans bearing the name of the University of Wisconsin - and a handful were run out of town by hostile residents who might, depending on the region, have threatened to batterfang them. Cassidy died in 2000, having overseen the collection of 2.3m answers to his researchers' questions. His tombstone reads: "On to Z!"
The dictionary's current chief editor, Joan Houston Hall, said the project might never really end: the next step is to put it all online, where it might be constantly updated. "It's very exciting, but it doesn't feel like the end," Hall said. Full article >>
