I find myself using dictionaries a lot. Because I generally subscribe to the view of language as a fluid construct embedded in the mind of individuals and as an emergent phenomenon of a group of speakers, I don’t believe dictionaries are the final arbiters of correct word usage. In high school, things were different. I remember having arguments over word meanings and then resorting to the dictionary to make claims such as “it can’t mean that” or “that word does not exist.” Now I find those statements to be rubbish. If a group of people uses a word a certain way to communicate (and they understand each other), then that is a correct usage of a real word. This is different than when I say “I sent my check to the university ombudsman” when I meant to say “I sent my check to the university bursar.” This case is an instance of performance failure, where I accidentally used the wrong word.

The dictionary I use most commonly nowadays is dictionary.com. Their advantage is the fact that they draw on many different dictionaries simultaneously (though the results are presented separately). You can see the definitions given by Random House, Merriam Webster, American Heritage, WordNet, and a bunch of others. I just noticed today that they have added the Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary. You are given the word in an array of languages including Arabic, Chinese, Korean, French, German, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, Hungarian, etc. Most common European languages are included and a few of the most common Asian languages. Noticeably absent is Swahili, nor is any other language from Africa included. Also included is the Online Dictionary of Computing, which is a nice touch. Look up the word tickle and you find a text editor for the Mac.

While dictionary.com is free, there are other dictionaries that aren’t. Merriam Webster has a paid service and so does the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is generally considered the most comprehensive dictionary available. If you pay for the service (which I once had to for a class on the history of English), you’ll find a lot of resources for etymological research. Also, examples including the specific word sense for each definition are included.

On the free front, which interests me more are a couple of interesting efforts. Wiktionary has been around for a while and is currently sporting 546k entries for English. A contender to Wiktionary, LingoZ was launched by the Israeli company Babylon recently. The argument against Wiktionary is that editorial back-and-forth is suitable for an encylocpedia, but not a dictionary. We return to the notion of the dictionary as the arbiter of meaning. The people who write dictionaries then are often considered the gatekeepers of this knowledge, but that is a fallacy. As Erin McKean puts it in her TED talk: lexicographers should be more like fishermen who cast their nets into the world of the English language (that is being used by real people) and drag up new specimens. With Wiktionary, on the one hand you have a user-created dictionary and on the other you have different editors changing it to their own “correct” version.

LingoZ is attempting to do one-up on Wiktionary by changing the editing mechanism. Users can request new words be added or add the words themselves. Glossaries can also be created that deal with a specific topic. There are a number of bilingual glossaries, Hebrew to English being prominently featured. One glossary contains over 1400 algebra terms for German to English. So pretty interesting. The best feature, though, is the ability to vote on definitions. This is where the editor model departs and the true arbiter of word meaning — actual usage — comes in. If you see a definition and it fits with your understanding of the word, give it a thumbs up. If the definition is wrong or not worded very well, thumbs down. The most popular definitions float to the top. The immediate drawback I see with this approach is that uncommon word senses will receive few votes and so may be unreliable. Over time, this effect should lessen, though.