I’ve never been too happy about it, but Dictionary.com has been my online dictionary of choice for a long time. It’s not the most exhaustively detailed resource, but they’ve kept simplicity and ease of use in mind over the years (since 1997), and offered decent definitions, some etymology, and both IPA and spelled pronunciations. Not too shabby. Unfortunately, sudden uninvited changes have tainted our luke-warm love affair. The site has taken a marked downturn in virtually every way: thoughtless new design elements, a decrease in the depth and number of results, more advertisements, slower performance. Gaww. Disappointing. A little research reveals the cause of this sad story: an acquisition. Apparently Ask.com acquired Lexico Group (Dictionary.com’s parent company) this summer.

So I’m moving on. What follows is a survey of some of the more compelling dictionary contenders on the web..

DICT.org

The official DICT Protocol documentation says it well..

..several freely-distributable dictionaries and lexicons have become available on the Internet. However, these freely-distributable databases are not accessible via a uniform interface, and are not accessible from a single site. They are often small and incomplete individually, but would collectively provide an interesting and useful database of English words. Examples include the Jargon file, the WordNet database, .. the 1913 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, and the Free Online Dictionary of Computing.

DICT.org provides a web interface to simultaneously search numerous open-source dictionaries and thesauri, but the presentation is really old-school and hard on the eyes. Small solid black monospaced text (think Courier) on a white background. Sure it’s got a worthwhile nostalgia to it, but it’s really not that easy to look at.. until now.

I’ve written a Greasemonkey script that cleans up DICT.org by removing superfluous page elements and changing the text styles and positioning to a more condensed and readable format. For those of you unfamiliar with Greasemonkey, it’s an add-on for Firefox that allows you to customize the way a webpage looks and works using small bits of JavaScript. To install my script, do the following:

1. Use Firefox.
2. Install the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox.
3. Install my script. This page features before and after screenshots of DICT.org so you know what to expect. While you’re at it, surf around at userscripts.org, it’s the de-facto site for Greasemonkey scripts.

OneLook

OneLook is the most comprehensive dictionary resource I’ve seen. It provides aggregate results collected from sources like Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Dictionary.com, Merriam Webster, the Free Dictionary and more than 100 others. They’ve also got some pretty sophisticated yet easy-to-use search syntax..

• bluebird - Find definitions of bluebird
• blue* - Find words and phrases that start with blue
• *bird - Find words and phrases that end with bird
• bl????rd - Find words that start with bl, end with rd, and have 4 letters in between

As if that weren’t enough, they’ve even got a reverse dictionary for looking up words by definition! Overall I think OneLook is more of a portal than a dictionary, like a middle-man to the best dictionary content on the web. But for me, that’s kind of its downfall: Making users pick which dictionary they want their definition from adds a time-consuming and usually-unwanted step to the process of looking up a word.

Honorable Mentions

• The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) - The self-described ‘definitive record of the English language.’ The OED is arguably the best of the old-school (printed) dictionaries, but you have to pay for it (about $30/month). If you’re a college student, though, you can probably get access to it through your school’s proxy server.
• NinjaWords - A very fast and clean dictionary, NinjaWords looks up words using Princeton’s WordNet software, and defaults to Wiktionary when results are found. This dictionary is a great option for someone who just wants quick and concise defintions.
• Urban Dictionary - Of course you know about this one.
• Etymonline - If you don’t have access to the OED, this is a great alternative site for finding word etymologies
• Bartleby.com - Another aggregator of numerous reference sources, including dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, almanacs, and literary works.

Language Commands on Queriac

Queriac is a pet project of mine. The basic premise of it is that it lets me (or anyone else who signs up) run search commands right from my browser’s address bar. For example, I can type ‘dict aphesis’ right into my address bar to be taken to a DICT.org search result for ‘aphesis’. Similiarly, I can search the OED with my ‘oed’ command, etc. An added bonus is that Queriac allows me to keep a running history of my searches, which I can share publicly or keep private. Users can also share commands. Here are some examples..

• All my search commands that I’ve tagged with ‘language’
• My DICT.org search history
• My entire language-related search history
• Words my girlfriend has looked up lately

If you want to give Queriac a try, go sign up. It’s free and easy.

It’s Not Over

Despite the multitude of dictionary resources on the web, I still feel unsatisfied. And while I’ve begun work on Logophilia, a personal project I think will ease a lot of my frustrations, it’s not ready for daylight and it probably won’t be for a while. In the meantime I’ll stick to DICT and Onelook.

Tags: dict, dictionary, firefox, greasemonkey, language, queriac, reference, thesaurus