Review of Dictionary.com, Perhaps the World’s Best English Dictionary

There are countless online dictionaries available today, most of which are fairly decent.

But all pale in comparison to Dictionary.com; the only dictionary I have ever truly loved.

In fact, if there weren’t laws against it 38 states, I would probably have married the site already…

The Good

• Audio samples: It’s always a good idea to listen to how a word sounds. Don’t fall into the trap of “thinking” you are pronouncing something correctly, only to find years later that you have been mispronouncing it all along! On Dictionary.com, just click the blue “speaker” icon to hear a word pronounced.
• Use of IPA: The International Phonetic Alphabet is a very powerful linguistic tool. It uses a finite (though quite lengthy) set of symbols to show exactly how any given word (in any given language) is pronounced. If you’ve gone to the trouble of learning a number of different orthographies, you will instantly appreciate the beauty of a universal system like this. The only problem is that, save for linguists, few people know the system in its entirety, if at all. But worry not; if you don’t know IPA, Dictionary.com also uses a fairly intuitive spelling-based pronunciation key as well with the stressed syllable shown in bold (e.g. “information” would be written “in-fer-mey-shuhn”).
• Word etymologies: Though certainly not necessary to learn a new word, it can be fun to find out where a word comes from. And the more interested you are in a term, the more likely it will stick in your long-term memory.
• Multiple entries per word: Dictionary.com collates definitions from a variety of sources, including science dictionaries, medical dictionaries, cultural dictionaries, etc. This is especially useful for terms that have very different meanings in different fields. As a good example of this, look up the word “morphology”.
• Free apps for Android and iPhones/iPod Touches: While the website is great, it does you little good when you are out and about without Internet access. The free apps allow you to look up words offline so there is never an excuse to procrastinate with, ”Oh, I’ll just look it up when I get home…”

The Bad

I had a really hard time trying to come up with things I don’t like about Dictionary.com… After racking my brain for a while, here are the only potential weaknesses that come to mind:

• It’s easy to get lost in the details: This is actually a problem with all good dictionaries. With so much good information, it is all too easy to continue looking up words used in the definition of the original term, and before you know it, you forget what you came there to look up in the first place! And this is especially easy online where you just have to mouseclick a word instead of thumbing through a book.
• No spaced repetition system: If Dictionary.com were to integrate a “spaced repetition” tool (see The Linguistionary) as part of their premium service offering, it would literally become the best dictionary on the planet. Period.

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