During my previous years as a student, when I needed to know the definition of a word I would usually use WordReference, however, during this course I have been working with online dictionaries and have realized there are lots of diverse types of possibilities when talking about online dictionaries.
For this review, I have chosen the Webster’s New World College Dictionary Online dictionary and thesaurus one of the dictionaries that the webpage YourDictionary offers. The Webster’s New World College Dictionary gives you free online dictionary search with definitions and thesaurus entries from Websters New World, spelling, audio pronunciation, etymology and usage examples.
Here we have a picture of how looks the initial page:
This dictionary has been recognized as a important resource for online dictionary and thesaurus use and has received many awards including: the “CIO Web Business 50 Award” from IDG’s CIO magazine, “Reference Site of the year” from LibrarySpot as well as recognition from Yahoo Internet magazine, CNN, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine.
Webster’s New World College dictionary is also the official dictionary of the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other important newspapers and it has been mentioned in expanded collections of language articles.
DICTIONARY ENTRIES:
These are just some examples of how Webster’s New World College Dictionary offers its entries. As it can be seen, besides the meaning, the ethimology of the word, the pronuntiation and related forms are given.
Here, I would like to show some examples of some words (verbs, nouns prepositions and adjectives) that the online dictionary can offer to its users, focusing mainly on its monolingual usage:
Verb: learn
Noun: Umbrella
Prepositon: by
Adjective: Beautiful
The dictionary also provides other words or expressions (related to the one we have found) that contain the word that is being looked up, for the research to be as accurate as possible. F.e. as we can see in the following example, the dictionary has found the word we were looking for, (the adjective “romantic”) and it has also added some related words that contain it, such as the adverb “romantically”.
This site offers another services, like looking for words related with different professional areas, such as : “bussiness and money”, “medical definitions”, “Phrases idioms”, “Computer definitions”, “Acronyms” and “biography” .
This is just an example of the disease called “appendicitis“:
Information sources:
- Your Diccionary, the last word in words. Retrieved: 07 March, 2010 at 21:55 from http://www.yourdictionary.com/
- Webster’s New World College dictionary. Retrieved: 07 March, 2010 at 21:55 from http://www.yourdictionary.com/dictionary-definitions/
