If you enjoyed this site, please consider donating $3. Any amount is appreciated. Thanks!

Problems of Open Source Dictionaries

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.

Goto Page: A Review of 3 Dictionaries, American Heritage vs New Oxford American, 1913 Websters Dictionary and WordNet, Problems of Open Source Dictionaries
2008-11
© 2008 by Xah Lee.