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OxfordDictionaries.com is one of the best dictionary sites you'll ever use
I know, I know, dictionaries are exciting. I'm sure you share my enthusiasm for the subject, right?
Okay, so now that I've got you all riveted, I can tell you that Oxford press is launching an all new dictionary website, and it actually looks great. Lots of online services try to present a "modern dictionary" in a sort of cool mash-up way (Wordnik, I'm looking at you), but the result is usually suboptimal. Just look up a word and see. In fact, here, I'll do it for you.
Here's craic, both on Wordnik and on Oxford. Since it's such an obscure word, none of the dictionaries give it an entry of its own. See what you get with Oxford versus Wordnik, though, and decide which is more useful?
My point is that, with dictionaries, having one trusted source for quality information is often better than any number of confusing mash-ups. Oxford's new site delivers; it's well laid out, and they have interesting touches of Ajax all over the place. For example, when you mouse over one sense of a word, it gets a different background color, making it easier to read.
They also have a nice contemporary usage section. It currently features an article with an interactive graph chronicling the rise of the word "tweet."
The site is in pre-launch beta now, so it's free. They want to charge for it in the future. I think that's fine (people should get paid for their work, obviously), but I hope they don't do something dumb like block it all behind a pay wall.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsJohnMay 5th 2010 2:16PM
I prefer Wordnik. They offer example sentences as well as definitions, and let you comment on words.
Also, if you search for 'craic' from the Oxford site, it returns 'no results', where Wordnik returns the correct page. Your post is linking to the entry for 'crack', and if you didn't know in advance that 'craic' was a variant of 'crack', you'd never in a million years find the right page.
TheOneAndOnlyJHMay 5th 2010 2:37PM
Verified.
Wordnik at least gives usage of the word.
Also, I love how wordnik has autocomplete when you are typing a word in. That's really useful if you have a long word and you don't quite know how to spell it. Try it and it might show up in the list, rather than searching multiple times until you spell it right.
John MansfieldMay 6th 2010 4:22AM
I don't agree with the above comments. When I searched for "craic" on the Oxford Dictionaries site, it took me straight to the entry.
Not sure what John and TheOneAndOnlyJH may have done wrong...
John MansfieldMay 6th 2010 4:35AM
... So now I've found it: there's a difference for "craic" between the US English and World English versions of the site. (Previous commentors using US, me using World.)
ShaneMay 13th 2010 7:55AM
Oh my. Poor old Oxford-still trying to catch up with online Dons Macmillan with their superb www.macmillandictionary.com. I suppose praise is deserved for ol' Oxford at least deciding to have a go-after Macmillan's ultra-successful 18 months since the launch of their dictionary site (more apty described as 'community' I suppose).
But seriously, putting 'cool mash up' and 'Oxford press' in the same sentence did make me laugh out loud! Thanks for a morning giggle.