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Web Dictionary Plans to Outdo Print Cousins

New features and bigger capacity make Wordnik a revolution in lexicography

By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff

Posted Mar 16, 2009 5:32 PM CDT

(Newser) – Ever stumbled across an unfamiliar word and wondered not only what it means, but what it looks and sounds like? Or what other words it appears alongside most often, and how many times it’s been used in print this year? The revolutionary new dictionary Wordnik, set to go online this week, provides the curious logophile with all these features and more, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Harnessing the native capabilities of the Internet, Wordnik definitions include images scraped from Flickr, audio recordings of pronunciations, and ratings of definitions by other users. The project includes 4 billion words and offers sample sentences plucked at random from the web. Want to flip through the pages and learn a new word at random? Hit the serendipity button, of course.

The word ginormous is framed by fingers after being added to a draft copy of the upcoming Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, in Springfield, Mass., Tuesday, July 3, 2007.
The word "ginormous" is framed by fingers after being added to a draft copy of the upcoming Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, in Springfield, Mass., Tuesday, July 3, 2007.   (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Alaska state historian Jo Antonson shows how many places in Alaska have the name of Crooked Creek and Crooked Island listed in the Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, Friday, April 11, 2008.
Alaska state historian Jo Antonson shows how many places in Alaska have the name of Crooked Creek and Crooked Island listed in the Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, Friday, April 11, 2008.   (AP Photo/Al Grillo)
The eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
The eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.   (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
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COMMENTS
Showing 1 of 1 comment
Guest
Mar 16, 2009 9:43 PM CDT
Linguists love to make fun of that stupid news story that keeps going around about how English is about to surpass the million-word mark... It's all about what you define as a word... To quote from LanguageLog.com: "Is dog one word, or two (a noun meaning 'a kind of animal', and a verb meaning 'to follow persistently')? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (dogs plural noun, dogs present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since we might also find hot-dog or even hotdog?" Read the full article, "986,120 words for snow job": http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002809.html
 

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