General: Dictionaries/Thesauri

See also the UVA Library Dictionaries page and the Subject Guides for language subject pages with online dictionaries.

1. OneLook Dictionary Search
   "A conglomeration of 112 dictionaries of varying quality" Can browse by subject." Worth a look.

2. Oxford English Dictionary UVA use only
   Search the 2nd edition of the OED for words, quotations, etymologies, and more. Restricted to UVa students, staff, and faculty.

3. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
   Search the 109,562-entry 1913 edition of Webster's. From the good folks at ARTFL.

4. Merriam-Webster's 10th Collegiate Dictionary
   Search the Webster's Dictionary. Also includes a built-in thesaurus and Word of the Day. Free to all users.

5. Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus
   50,000-entry morphological dictionary with integrated thesaurus (use "*" for truncating roots and suffixes).

6. Middle English Compendium
   Compilation of three excellent web-based resources: the landmark 13-volumeMiddle English Dictionary, a bibliography of Middle English materials, and a Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. From the University of of Michigan.

7. AltaVista Web Translator
   See what your web page would look like in French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. Also translate from those languages into English.

8. Foreignword.com
   Next time you need to know the Estonian word for librarian (raamatukoguhoidja) look no farther than foreignword.com. This site allows users to translate words from English into nearly 60 languages by searching over 150 different online dictionaries. Also includes TranslateNow- a tool to translate phrases and sentences and LinkSearch- an searchable index of online dictionaries.

9. Freetranslation.com
   This translation service quickly translates the content of a Web page or any text (up to 15,000 characters) that is typed or pasted into search box. Converts from English to Spanish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, or Portuguese or to English from the first three. Unlike other translation services, this Web engine "interprets the structure of sentences in the source language (the language you are translating from) and generates a translation based on the rules of the target language" rather than translating documents word-for-word. Freetranslation.com is a product of Transparent Language.

10. Lexicool - a mulitilingual dictionary portal.
    From an international team of linguists and IT specialists based in France, links to over 4000 bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and glossaries freely available on the Internet.

11. On-line Dictionaries
    Links to nearly 350 dictionaries in over 100 different languages from Afrikaans to Zulu. Scroll to bottom of page for foreign language dictionaries.

12. ARTFL French-English/English-French Dictonary
    75,000-word dictionary fro m the folks at ARTFL. "... a limited resource originally developed for machine translation applications, but better than nothing."

13. SpanishDict.com
    Spanish language dictionary of over 53,000 words with nearly 10,000 audio pronunciations. Both Spanish-English and English-Spanish.

14. Digital Dictionaries of South Asia
    From the South Asia Language and Area Center at University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the Triangle South Asia Consortium in North Carolina.
    Subject/Specialized Dictionaries

15. Subject dictionaries from the Librarian's Index to the Internet
    Over 50 subjects, from Accounting and American Sign Language to Mythology, Plants, and Weights and Measures are represented on this page.

16. The Word Spy
    Over 1,000 "recently-coined words, existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance, and older words that are now being used in new ways." From Toronto-based word geek Paul McFedries.

17. On-line Dictionary of Computing
    Contains over 13,000 entries including "acronyms, jargon, programming languages, tools, architectures, operating systems, networking, theory, mathematics, telecoms, institutions, companies, projects, products, history, in fact anything to do with computing."

18. Digital Library Building Blocks: Glossary
    "This glossary of terms for digital librarianship can help you distinguish OAI from an IOU, and familiarize you with acronyms, terms, and phrases such as METS, "XML Gateway," and "behaviors metadata." Searchable; browsable by major topic. From the California Digital Library"

19. Rhyming Dictionary
    Looking for something that rhymes with lugubrious? A useful tool for poets and lymricists, when it's working. \
    Thesauri

20. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus
    Search or browse the 3rd edition (1996) of this contemporary thesaurus of of 35,000 synonyms. From Bartleby.com.

21. WWWebster Thesaurus
    Thousands of synonyms and antonyms from this Merriam-Webster classic. With links to 10th edition M-W Dictionary.

22. Roget's Thesaurus
    Search the 1911 edition of Peter Roget's thesaurus, see the original Table of Contents, and see an alphabetical list of titles.

23. See also the Synonym and Antonym Finder
    Acronyms/Abbreviations/Symbols

24. Acronyms and Abbreviations Dictionary
    Ever find yourself trying to remember what UNESCO or AFSCME stands for? Find the answers to all of your acronym and abbreviation puzzlers. Includes nearly 18,000 entries. Updated weekly.

25. Acronym Finder
    Look up 61,000 acronyms/abbreviations and their meanings. A searchable database containing common acronyms and abbreviations about all subjects, with a focus on computers, technology, telecommunications, and the military.

26. SYMBOLS.com - Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms
    SYMBOLS.com contains more than 2,500 Western signs, arranged into 54 groups according to their graphic characteristics. In 1,600 articles their histories, uses, and meanings are thoroughly discussed. The signs range from ideograms carved in mammoth teeth by Cro-Magnon men, to hobo signs and subway graffiti.

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