Web Resources Useful for Dictionary Research

During 1997/98, I was one of the students working on a new English dictionary at the University of Toronto. The following are a few of the World-Wide Web links that are useful in this kind of work (all updated May 14/99).

• Dictionaries & Thesauri on the Web
  • Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (only accessible to UofT users)
  • Merriam-Webster Dictionary & Thesaurus
  • Merriam-Webster's Student's Electronic Dictionary
  • UPDATED URL FEB/2000>Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (revised to 1996) (licensed to UofT, available to UofT domains)
  • Collins/Birmingham University COBUILD
    • Cobuild Home Page
    • Cobuild's Bank of English Java Demo
    • CobuildDirect Demonstration Form (no Java required)
    • Collins Cobuild Student's Dictionary Online
  • Research-It! - Your one-stop reference desk (several different dictionaries, etc.)
  • Glossary of Musical Terms
  • Library of Congress Thesauri Home Page
    • LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II (TGM II)
  • Vocabularies: Thesaurus of Geographic Names (multi-lingual names, former names, etc.)
  • Semantic Rhyming Dictionary
  • Hierarchical databases:
    • The Tree of Life Project Root Page (biological hierarchy)
    • Lexical FreeNet (connect concepts in various ways)
    • WordNet Home Page
      • WordNet Search (a different search interface for WordNet)
  • A couple of interesting slang pages:
    • The Jive Page - The Jive Mailbag
    • The Totally Unofficial Rap Dictionary
  • Fowler, H. W. 1908. The King's English. (the classic reference on English grammar)
• A newspaper column on words:
  • The Word Detective
• New Words
  • Keith Lynch's timeline of net related terms and concepts (history of first appearances of new terms on the Internet)
• Alta Vista Queries:
  • AltaVista Search: Advanced Query (search for English only)
  • AltaVista: Simple Query (search for English only)
  • About AltaVista Search (how the refine function works)
  • Sample Alta Vista queries (note the dif HREF="http://www.nunanet.com/~nunat/week/70711.html#5">Nunatsiaq News, July 11, 1997 (common Canadian far north usage: "the summer sealift"
  • Military Sealift Command (U.S. military usage example)
  • Military Sealift Command - Naval Intelligence
• "shoulder season" sample usage:
  • shoulder.html

A few other miscellaneous linguistic links:

• Summer Institute of Linguistics Home Page
• Parlez-vous l'europanto?
• Fockleyr Gaelg - Baarle (Manx Dictionary)
• IGS: International Graphonomics Society (history of handwriting and writing in general)

Revised Jan 13/01

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