Lexico

Last updated

Lexico
Lexico logo.svg
Type of site
Dictionary
Available in
  • English
  • Spanish
Dissolved 26 August 2022;19 months ago (2022-08-26)
Owner Dictionary.com
Created by Oxford University Press
URL www.lexico.com (redirects to www.dictionary.com )
formerly www.oxforddictionaries.com (2010–2019)
CommercialYes
RegistrationNone
Current statusOffline

Lexico was a dictionary website that provided a collection of English and Spanish dictionaries produced by Oxford University Press (OUP), the publishing house of the University of Oxford. While the dictionary content on Lexico came from OUP, this website was operated by Dictionary.com, whose eponymous website hosts dictionaries by other publishers such as Random House. The website was closed and redirected to Dictionary.com on 26 August 2022.

Contents

Before the Lexico site was launched, the Oxford Dictionary of English and New Oxford American Dictionary were hosted by OUP's own website Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO), later known as Oxford Living Dictionaries. The dictionaries' definitions have also appeared in Google definition search and the Dictionary application on macOS, among others, licensed through the Oxford Dictionaries API. [1] [2]

History

In the 2000s, OUP allowed access to content of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English on a website called AskOxford.com. [3] In 2010, Oxford Dictionaries Online was launched under oxforddictionaries.com, [4] superseding the dictionary content of AskOxford.com. Buyers of the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English , also published in 2010, were granted a one-year subscription to the website's subscription content. [5] The website's English dictionaries incorporated content of the Oxford Dictionary of English, New Oxford American Dictionary , Oxford Thesaurus of English, and Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus. It also provided a Spanish monolingual dictionary and bilingual dictionaries between English and several languages. [6] As of June 2014, it was updated every three months. [7]

In 2014, OUP launched Oxford Global Languages, an initiative to build lexical resources (bilingual dictionaries) of the world's languages, starting with Zulu and Northern Sotho online dictionaries released in 2015. [8] In 2016, the free content of Oxford Dictionaries Online was rebranded as Oxford Living Dictionaries, and the subscription content as Oxford Dictionaries Premium. [9]

In June 2019, the free-of-charge dictionaries of English and Spanish were moved to Lexico.com, a collaboration between OUP and Dictionary.com, though with the lexicographic content continuing to be written solely by OUP staff. While the offer of the US English dictionary on Oxford Living Dictionaries was terminated upon the migration to Lexico except for words which the UK dictionary did not have entries for, [10] [11] the US dictionary became fully available again on Lexico in early 2020. [12] "Lexico" was itself part of the former name of the company Dictionary.com, Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. [13]

In March 2020, the remaining Oxford Living Dictionaries websites, which hosted dictionaries made in the Global Languages programme, were closed. A statement from OUP said, "Rather than offering a dictionary website for every digitally under-resourced language, we will facilitate third parties to build products and services that best serve the needs of each individual language community. Our efforts will be focused on creating and providing the data that these third parties need." [14] At the time of the closure, they hosted dictionaries of Zulu, Northern Sotho, Malay, Urdu, Tswana, Indonesian, Romanian, Latvian, Swahili, Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Tatar, Xhosa, Southern Quechua, Tajik, Tok Pisin, Turkmen, Telugu, and Greek. [15]

On 26 August 2022, Lexico was closed and redirected to Dictionary.com. [16] Oxford Dictionaries Premium was still available. [17]

Comparison with the Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a subscription service, while Lexico used the Oxford Dictionaries API [18] to offer more modern versions of the Oxford Dictionary of English and New Oxford American Dictionary to users for free. The OED described its difference from Oxford Dictionaries, the predecessor to Lexico, as follows:

The dictionary content in Oxford Dictionaries focuses on current English and includes modern meanings and uses of words. Where words have more than one meaning, the most important and common meanings in modern English are given first, and less common and more specialist or technical uses are listed below. The OED, on the other hand, is a historical dictionary and it forms a record of all the core words and meanings in English over more than 1,000 years, from Old English to the present day, and including many obsolete and historical terms. Meanings are ordered chronologically in the OED, according to when they were first recorded in English ... [19]

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern Sotho</span> Sotho-Tswana language spoken in South Africa

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<i>New Oxford American Dictionary</i> Collection of American English words and their meanings

The New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) is a single-volume dictionary of American English compiled by American editors at the Oxford University Press.

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

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Murray (lexicographer)</span> Primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (1837–1915)

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

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Edmund S. C. Weiner is the former co-editor of the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1985–1989) and Deputy Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (1993–present). He originally joined the OED staff in 1977, becoming the dictionary's chief philologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic dictionary</span> Dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media

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Oxford spelling is a spelling standard, named after its use by the University of Oxford, that prescribes the use of British spelling in combination with the suffix -ize in words like realize and organization instead of -ise endings.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marghanita Laski</span> English journalist and novelist (1915–1988)

Marghanita Laski was an English journalist, radio panellist and novelist. She also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories, and contributed about 250,000 additions to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Peter Gilliver is a lexicographer and associate editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Dictionary</span> Online dictionary service by Google

Google Dictionary is an online dictionary service of Google that can be accessed with the "define" operator and other similar phrases in Google Search. It is also available in Google Translate and as a Google Chrome extension. The dictionary content is licensed from Oxford University Press's Oxford Languages. It is available in different languages, such as English, Spanish and French. The service also contains pronunciation audio, Google Translate, a word origin chart, Ngram Viewer, and word games, among other features for the English-language version. Originally available as a standalone service, it was integrated into Google Search, with the separate service discontinued in August 2011.

<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".

References

  1. "Oxford Dictionaries API". Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 22 October 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2019.
  2. Bell, Karissa (4 December 2015). "Why Siri showed a definition of b*tch that offended everyone". Mashable. Retrieved 22 June 2019.
  3. "AskOxford.com". Reference & User Services Quarterly. 44 (1): 40. 2004. JSTOR   20864286.
  4. "Oxford University Press Chooses PubFactory to Develop Oxford English Dictionary". PubFactory. 4 August 2010. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  5. ""Vuvuzela", "staycation" among 2,000 words added to Oxford Dictionary" . The Independent. 20 August 2010. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  6. "Oxford Dictionaries content help". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 27 August 2016.
  7. Harrison, Emma (19 June 2014). "Oxford dictionaries: Demise of the printed editions?". BBC News. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  8. "Oxford Global Languages". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  9. "Help". Oxford Living Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 25 September 2016.
  10. "Lexico.com FAQS". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 16 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  11. "About". Lexico. Archived from the original on 7 February 2020.
  12. "About". Lexico. Archived from the original on 17 February 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2020.
  13. "Amended and Restated Operating Agreement of Dictionary.com, LLC". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 17 July 2008. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
  14. "The latest news about Oxford Global Languages". Oxford Languages. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 30 March 2020. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  15. "Our dictionaries". Oxford Languages. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 28 March 2020. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  16. "Lexico". Archived from the original on 13 August 2022. Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  17. "Welcome to Oxford Dictionaries Premium". Oxford Dictionaries Premium. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 21 November 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2022.
  18. "Oxford Dictionaries API". Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 22 October 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2019.
  19. "The OED and Oxford Dictionaries". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 28 February 2018.