The best English dictionary

Paul Frank paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU
Fri Jun 3 15:13:56 UTC 2005


> Interesting claim, Paul.  But wouldn't the ideal "best dictionary"
> resource also direct you somewhere useful (if only to the plural)
> when you look up "ghost turd" (in the singular) rather than throw up
> its hands and shrug its shoulders as http://www.onelook.com/ does?
>
> Larry

Yes, ideally. OneLook is a machine. Nor am I denigrating the OED or DARE or
Webster 3. But all in all, I do think OneLook offers much the OED doesn't.
Anyhow, as a monolingual dictionary of contemporary English, the Canadian
Termium (a French-English-Spanish) dictionary arguably beats the OED by a
long shot, though they obviously cover very different sets of words, and
Termium is not a historical dictionary.

Paul
______________________________________
Paul Frank
English translation
from Chinese: humanities and the social sciences
from German, French, and Spanish: sinology
www.languagejottings.blogspot.com
e-mail: paulfrank at post.harvard.edu



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