Collins English Dictionary

Last updated

Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged 13th edition Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged Edition.jpg
Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged 13th edition

The Collins English Dictionary is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. [1]

Contents

Corpus

The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is continually updated and has over 20 billion words. [2]

Editions

History

The 1979 edition of the dictionary, with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, was the first British English dictionary to be typeset from the output from a computer database in a specified format. This meant that every aspect of an entry was handled by a different editor using different forms or templates. Once all the entries for an entry had been assembled, they were passed on to be keyed into the slowly assembled dictionary database which was completed for the typesetting of the first edition. [ citation needed ]

In a later edition, they increasingly used the Bank of English established by John McHardy Sinclair at COBUILD to provide typical citations rather than examples composed by the lexicographer.

CollinsDictionary.com

The unabridged Collins English Dictionary was published on the web on 31 December 2011 on CollinsDictionary.com, along with the unabridged dictionaries of French, German, Spanish and Italian. [4] The site also includes example sentences showing word usage from the Collins Bank of English Corpus, word frequencies and trends from the Google Ngrams project, and word images from Flickr.

In August 2012, CollinsDictionary.com introduced crowd-sourcing for neologisms, [5] [6] [7] whilst still maintaining overall editorial control to remain distinct from Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary. This followed an earlier launch of a discussion forum for neologisms in 2004. [8]

In May 2015, CollinsDictionary.com added 6,500 new Scrabble words to their Collins Official Scrabble Wordlist. The words are based on terms related to and influenced by slang, social media, food, technology, and more. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dictionary</span> Collection of words and their meanings

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

<i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> Historical dictionary of the English language began in 1857

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around the world.

<i>Scrabble</i> Board game with words

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns and are included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">V</span> 22nd letter of the Latin alphabet

V, or v, is the twenty-second letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is vee, plural vees.

Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), an American lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merriam-Webster</span> American publisher and dictionary

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an American company that publishes reference books and is mostly known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.

<i>The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language</i> Collection of English words and their meanings, published by HarperCollins

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) is a dictionary of American English published by HarperCollins. It is currently in its fifth edition.

<i>Macquarie Dictionary</i> Dictionary of Australian English

The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It is considered by many to be the standard reference on Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is now published by Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd. In October 2007 it moved its editorial office from Macquarie University to the University of Sydney, and later to the Pan Macmillan offices in the Sydney central business district.

The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY", refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American and British English spelling differences</span> Comparison between U.S. and UK English spelling

Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British/English in the Commonwealth of Nations date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.

Collins Scrabble Words is the word list used in English-language tournament Scrabble in most countries except the US, Thailand and Canada. The term SOWPODS is an anagram of the two abbreviations OSPD and OSW, these being the original two official dictionaries used in various parts of the world at the time. Although the two source dictionaries have now changed their respective titles, the term SOWPODS is still used by tournament players to refer to the combination of the two sources. There has not been any actual hard-copy list produced called SOWPODS, although the current Collins Scrabble Words, or CSW, is in effect the full SOWPODS list by a different name.

Irregardless is a word sometimes used in place of regardless or irrespective, which has caused controversy since the early twentieth century, though the word appeared in print as early as 1795.

<i>Euouae</i> Musical mnemonic

Euouae is an abbreviation used as a musical mnemonic in Latin psalters and other liturgical books of the Roman Rite. It stands for the syllables of the Latin words saeculorum Amen, taken from the Gloria Patri, a Christian doxology that concludes with the phrase in saecula saeculorum. Amen. The mnemonic is used in the notation of the variable melodic endings of psalm tones in Gregorian chant.

NASPA Word List is the official word authority for tournament Scrabble in the USA and Canada under the aegis of NASPA Games. It is based on the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) with modifications to make it more suitable for tournament play. Its British and international-English counterpart is Collins Scrabble Words.

<i>Official Scrabble Players Dictionary</i> Word authority for American tournaments

The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary or OSPD is a dictionary developed for use in the game Scrabble, by speakers of American and Canadian English.

Twat is an English-language vulgarism which means the vulva or vagina, and is used figuratively as a derogatory epithet. In British English, and Irish English it is a common insult referring to an obnoxious or stupid person regardless of gender; in American English, it is rarer and usually used to insult a woman. In Britain and Ireland, the usual pronunciation rhymes with "hat", while Americans most often use the older pronunciation that rhymes with "squat". This is reflected in the former variant spelling of "twot".

<i>Oxford Dictionary of English</i> Single-volume dictionary, first published in 1998

The Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) is a single-volume English dictionary published by Oxford University Press, first published in 1998 as The New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE). The word "new" was dropped from the title with the Second Edition in 2003. The dictionary is not based on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) – it is a separate dictionary which strives to represent faithfully the current usage of English words. The Revised Second Edition contains 355,000 words, phrases, and definitions, including biographical references and thousands of encyclopaedic entries. The Third Edition was published in August 2010, with some new words, including "vuvuzela".

The World English-Language Scrabble Players' Association (WESPA) is the overarching global body for English-language national Scrabble associations and similar entities.

Craig Beevers is an English professional Scrabble player and former World Scrabble Champion.

References

  1. "History". www.harpercollins.co.uk. Glasgow: HarperCollins. 2015. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Collins English Dictionary [14th edition]". collins.co.uk. HarperCollins . Retrieved 18 March 2024.
  3. "Collins English Dictionary [13th edition]". collins.co.uk. HarperCollins . Retrieved 16 November 2018.
  4. Collins launches free dictionary site Wired UK , 3 January 2012. Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Price, Emily (17 July 2012). "YOLO in the Dictionary? Collins Crowdsources Lexicon". Mashable . New York City: Ziff Davis. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  6. Reid, Susanna Victoria; Turnbull, William Robert Joylon; Brown, Alex; et al. (11 September 2012). "Blootered? New words in dictionary" (Video). BBC News Online . MediaCityUK, Salford Quays: British Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  7. "Collins online dictionary adds mummy porn and blootered". BBC News Online . Glasgow: British Broadcasting Corporation. 11 September 2012. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  8. Moss, Stephen (16 December 2004). "Collins launches online dictionary to debate new words". The Guardian . London. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  9. "Discover the New Scrabble Words". www.collinsdictionary.com. HarperCollins. 21 May 2015. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.