Xah Lee, 2008-11
There are few problems with open source dictionaries as served by dict.org.
• It requires the singular form to find the right word. (e.g. try lookup “chairs”) This is a major pain.
• Problem with phonetic system. e.g. it often uses some idiosyncratic made-up pronunciation system (typical of American dicts) as opposed to IPA. (For a comparison of major US dicts on pron system, see: English Phonetics ) Worse is that ASCII is used to emulate pronunciation symbols, rendering it unusable. For example, compare: “[u^]n`d[~e]r*st[a^]nd"” vs “ˈəndərˌstønd” The first is from dict.org, the second from New Oxford American dict.
• Problem with accented letters. That is, you can't lookup words with a accented letter such as touché, précis, ménage à trois, lycée, passé, raison d'être, ... etc. Normally this is not a problem since we often type without diacritics, the problem occurs when you lookup words from existing text using popup menu.
• 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]
• Of course, the definition quality, vocabulary size, up-to-date quality, are not comparable to commercial dicts.
Note: To lookup dict.org or any reference website with emacs, see: Dictionary and Reference Lookup with Emacs.