Dictionaries

[robinturner]

I spent most of today working on my Turkish-English dictionary, motivated largely by panic: I am still on "A". Actually, in my last major push on the dictionary project, I'd got as far as "H", but I had to go back and add a load of new words (really useful ones like "alabaster", for example - and I criticise my students for padding their essays to make the minimum word count!).

Since I'm not bilingual (and occasionally my knowledge of English takes a nose-dive), I spend a lot of time cross-checking with other dictionaries. On my desk I have the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English as a guide to words I might include, though as I recently remarked to maggie_lucy, the author must have had some pretty advanced learners in mind, since my vocabulary has increased as a result of ploughing through it: I now know that an areca is a kind of palm tree, for example. I also have the Redhouse Turkish-English pocket dictionary. It's not 100% accurate, but it's a good quick reference (and much better than that awful Langenscheidt pocket dictionary).

However, my main resource is the wonderful Rosetta Edition of Webster's Online Dictionary. This not only gives you a definition, but translations into a score of languages, synonyms, collocations, usage frequency (from the British National Corpus), alternative orthographies (including Conan Doyle's dancing men alphabet), anagrams, rhymes, the most popular web searches including the word, and so forth. It's more than a dictionary, it's a ... something or other.

And this leads me to my latest find, the Onelook Reverse Dictionary. If there's a word on the tip of your tongue, you can type in the meaning and see what it comes up with. It is, however, rather quirky in its choice of words: as the site says "We urge you to click on a word to check its definition before using it in your Oscars acceptance speech or honors thesis." I won't say what I typed in to test it, but I was amused that the results included both "premature ejaculation" and "international socialist group".

Comments

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing sparts.

words

[maggie-lucy.livejournal.com]

You should try quick crosswords. There are so many interpretations of simple words it takes a devious mind to complete these 'simple' puzzles. - 'lean'- slant, thin, askew (a favourite of compilers) slim, seek support, fit,spare etc.

[soliss.livejournal.com]

Yes! That reverse dictionary successfully told me the word "eponymous", which has been bugging me for about a month now.

And with that I can go to sleep.