Dictionaries

Have you ever wondered what words are the most looked up in a dictionary? It’s a small thing, but earlier today I was asked for my opinion on a dictionary app. As I was trying the app I began to wonder what words did people need help on the most.

After a little bit of research, I found three dictionary websites that offer a top five list. (I also found a half dozen that don’t offer a list.) The lists did not show what I expected.  If the three lists, there are 14 words that show up once each and only one word that shows up twice (insidious).

I expected more overlap, frankly. But the  diversity is fascinating. These are not easy words, and there are 2 that I actually had to think about before I was sure i knew what they meant.

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Memidex is releasing a free online dictionary and thesaurus today. It’s being called “the Internet’s first combined index of external definitions, audio, and etymology”, and it has over 12 million detailed references found from respected sources online.

This isn’t just a dictionary. Memidex didn’t just gather definitions; it also went and found other sources of images, descriptions, and sounds and indexed those sources. Memidex then built a search engine to dig through all this content and help you find what you’re looking for.

If you look up a word, the definitions might come from any of a dozen online sources, and you can also see what several different sites saw about the etymology of a word. If you’d like to hear it pronounced, you will have sound clips drawn from as many as 7 different websites.

via Memidex

The Oxford English Dictionary is dropping its print edition and going digital for the OED3.

The Telegraph UK reports: “Sales of the third edition of the vast tome have fallen due to the increasing popularity of online alternatives, according to its publisher.”

UPDATE: The Oxford Times is reporting that the OED is not going all digital. From the OT: “The OUP told the Oxford Mail last night that no decision had been taken. OUP spokesman Anna Baldwin said: ‘No decision has yet been made on the format of the third edition. It’s likely to be more than a decade before the full edition is published and a decision on format will be taken at that point. Lexicographers are currently preparing the third edition of the OED, which is 28 per cent complete. No final completion date is yet confirmed.’”

The OED 3 has been in production for 21 years and is still a decade away from its publish date, according to the Telegraph.

The OED has existed online for the last ten years. According to the OED website, the online edition will relaunch in December 2010. Subscribers pay $375 as an annual fee for access.