Problems of Open Source Dictionaries

Xah Lee, 2008-11-30, 2011-02-15

There are few problems with open source dictionaries as served by dict.org.

Plural Form Not Supported

It requires the singular form to find the right word. (e.g. try lookup “chairs”) This is a major pain.

Problem with Accented Letters

When you lookup a word with accented letters, e.g. touché, précis, ménage à trois, lycée, passé, raison d'être, … , the dictionary gives you a error “No definitions found”. You have to use a form without those special characters.

Atrocious Phonetic Notation

It uses some idiosyncratic made-up pronunciation system (typical of American dicts) as opposed to IPA. Worse is that ASCII characters are used to emulate pronunciation symbols, rendering it unusable. For example, compare:

[u^]n`d[~e]r*st[a^]nd"

ˈəndərˌstønd

The first is from dict.org, the second from New Oxford American dict. (For a comparison of major US dictionary's pronunciation systems, see: English Phonetics: IPA vs American Heritage Dictionary vs Merriam-Webster.)

Most commercial dicts online have voice-recorded pronunciations, of course. This is particular useful for borrowed words, e.g. those with accent marks.

Confusing Results

Often, there are 2 or more results from “The Collaborative International Dictionary of English”, apparently of the same version but they differ slightly in content. e.g. lookup “precis”, then it gives:

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

Pr'ecis \Pr['e]`cis"\ (pr[asl]`s[=e]"), n. [F. See Precise.]
   A concise or abridged statement or view; an abstract; a
   summary.
   [1913 Webster]

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

precis \precis\ v. t.
   To make a precis of.
   [WordNet 1.5]

Inferior Definitions

The definition quality, vocabulary size, up-to-date quality, are inferior to commercial dictionaries.

2011-02-15

As of today, the open source dictionary dict.org hasn't improved a bit. All of the above problems are still there.