Dictionaries, Thesauri, Phrase Finders & Acronyms

Key English Language Dictionaries

Macquarie Dictionary
4th edition. University of Sydney Staff and Students only.
url: Macquarie Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary
2nd edition. University of Sydney Staff and Students only.
url: OED Online

Language Dictionaries

Australian Indigenous Languages Page
Created by Australian National University and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
url: http://www.dnathan.com/VL/austLang.htm

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Part of the Bartleby project the third Edition of this dictionary, "contains over 350,000 entries and meanings. Word definitions are further enhanced by over 34,000 examples of use, more than 500 usage notes and a newly revised appendix of Indo-European roots."
url: http://www.bartleby.com/61/

ARTFL Project: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 Edition
url: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/webster.form.html

Middle English Dictionary
The Middle English Compendium which "has been designed to offer easy access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies, and an associated network of electronic resources."
url: http://www.hti.umich.edu/dict/med/

Englisch-Deutsch Woeterbuch.
url: http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/

French-English Dictionary from ARTFL
url: http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=frengdict

Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek
Perseus Project, Tufts University.
url: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lexindex?entry=pe/mpw

Liddell & Scott Intermediate Lexicon (Classical Greek)
Perseus Project, Tufts University
url: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/midlid?entry=pe/mpw&=Greek

Kamusi Project: the Internet Living Swahili Dictionary
An undertaking of the Yale Program in African Languages and the Council of African Studies at Yale.
url: http://www.yale.edu/swahili/

Subject Dictionaries

A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names
Compiled by Garth Kemerling, Newberry College, Philosophy Dept. (USA). Kemerling gives references to sources upon which his dictionary is based.
url: http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/index.htm

Anthromorphenics: Anthropology Glossary
Created by John Kantner and Kevin Vaughn at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Anthropology Department.
url: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/glossary/index2.html

Semiotic Terms
Created by Cliff Joslyn.
url: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SEMIOTER.html

Ancient Scripts of the World.
Directory of websites on different writing systems compiled and maintained by Stanford University computer science student Lawrence Lo.
url: http://www.ancientscripts.com/

Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind: PoM.
Editor Chris Eliasmith, sponsored by the Philosophy-Neuroscience- Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis
url: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/

The Ism Book: A Field Guide to the Nomenclature of Philosophy
A hypertext Dictionary of Philosophy. Peter Saint-Andre, University of Montana Missoula.
url: http://www.saint-andre.com/ismbook/ism3.html

ODLIS:Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science
Copyright 2000 by Joan M. Reitz.
url: http://www.wcsu.edu/library/odlis.html

Special Subject Dictionaries
Comprehensive list from the OneLook Dictionary Website.
url: http://www.onelook.com/browse.shtml#type_x

Specialist Dictionaries

World Wide Words
"World Wide Words is devoted to the English language - its history, quirks, curiosities and evolution. The Words site is organised into sections, each with its own index to help you find your way about."
url: http://www.quinion.com/words/

Glossary of Poetic Terms
by Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto 1999-2002
url: http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display_rpo/poetterm.cfm

Searchable Semantic Rhyming Dictionary
url: http://www.rhymezone.com/

Literary and Rhetorical Terms
Resource Guide for literary and Rhetorical Terms Newman Library.Baruch College. City University of New York
url: http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/info_resources/subjects/literature/terms.htm

A Dictionary of Slang: English slang and colloquialisms used in the United Kingdom
J.M Duckworth. Includes comprehensive directory of links to related web sites.
url: http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/

Hutchinson Dictionary of Difficult Words
Searchable dictionary of over 13,900 "difficult words"
url: http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/

Technical Dictionaries

FOLDOC: Free Online Dictionary of Computing
url: http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/

ECHO-EURODICAUTOM
Database of mainly official and technical terms in several European languages.
url: http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~kurlanda/eurodicautom.html

A Dictionary of Units
Summary of most units of measure used around the world.
url: http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/dictunit/dictunit.htm

NASA Thesaurus
url: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/thesfrm1.htm

New Hackers Dictionary
Dictionary of computer jargon.
url: http://www.outpost9.com/reference/jargon/jargon_toc.html

Dictionary Directories

A Web of Online Dictionaries
Comprehensive collection of online dictionaries covering many languages.Compiled by Robert Beard, Bucknell University, Lewisberg. PA.
url: http://www.yourdictionary.com

Xref: The web reference search engine
url: http://www.xrefer.com

Dictionary.com
Excellent directory for locating dictionaries and related reference works.
url: http://www.dictionary.com/

Ethnologue: Languages of the World
Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas Texas. Provides comprehensive information on the Languages of the World includes a "Language name" Index and a "Language Family Index"
url: http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/

Human Languages Page
Other dictionaries and language resources available via this website.
url: http://www.june29.com/HLP/h-linfo.html/

World Languages Page
url: http://www.livjm.ac.uk/language/

Allwords
url: http://www.allwords.com/

OneLook Dictionaries
url: http://www.onelook.com/

Thesauri

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus
Third edition, 1996 from the Bartleby Project.
url: http://www.bartleby.com/62/

Roget's Thesaurus.
url: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/ROGET.html

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus
url: http://www.m-w.com/thesaurus.htm

Library of Congress Thesauri
This site includes The Thesaurus for Graphic material, The Legislative Indexing Vocabulary and the Global Legal Information network (GLIN) Thesaurus. Thesauri can be searched or browsed alphabetically.
url: http://www.loc.gov/lexico/servlet/lexico

WordNet- A Lexical Database for English
"WordNet¨ is an on-line lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets.". Developed by the Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University.
url: http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/

Acronyms

The World Wide Web Acronym and Abbreviation Server
Searchable database of over 17,000 acronyms. Compiled and maintained by Stephen Kingston
"Explain also holds cross links to many other searchable acronym databases on the Internet (all those we could find) and if a search fails on our database you can try the same search on the other databases."
url: http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/index.html

Explain
url: http://www.irs.aber.ac.uk/acronyms/

The Acronym Expander
url: http://www.ucc.ie/cgi-bin/expansion

Abbreviations of Canadian Provinces and American States.
url: http://www.enoreo.on.ca/flatstanley//abbrev.html

Abbreviations for International Organisations and Groups
url: gopher://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/0/dlam/cia/all/Appendix.B

Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Initialisms on the World Wide Web
url: http://spin.com.mx/~smarin/acro.html

All that JAS: Journal Abbreviation Sources.
Cyberstacks comprehensive listing of sources for journal abbreviation organised by subject.
url: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/JAS.htm

Environmental and Environment-Related Acronyms
Database of acronyms from (ERIN) Environmental Resources Information Network.
url: http://www.environment.gov.au/psg/erin/acronyms/acronyms.html

Phrase Finders

Phrase Finder
Meanings and origins of over 2,000 English phrases and idioms.
url: http://www.phrases.org.uk/

The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Browsable and searchable hypertext edition of "The Dictionary of Phrase and fable by E. Cobham Brewer From the new and enlarged edition of 1894."
url: http://www.bibliomania.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/