This free dictionary by Farlex is not a common dictionary. It also contains an Encyclopaedia and a Thesaurus (“a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning containing synonyms and sometimes antonyms, in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations.”) It is available for everybody in this web direction: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/. This dictionary is very useful due to its completeness.
The main source of TheFreeDictionary’s general English dictionary is Houghton Mifflin’s premier dictionary, the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. This authoritative work is the largest of the American Heritage® dictionaries and contains over 200,000 boldface terms and more than 33,000 written examples. The Fourth Edition also incorporates more than 10,000 new words.
Containing 260,000 entries, the general dictionary is augmented with Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, and is enhanced by 30,000 illustrations, an audio pronunciation feature, etymologies, abbreviations, biographical entries, and more. Definitions are accompanied by usage examples from classic works of literature, courtesy of The Free Library.
Additionally, translations to Spanish, French, German, and Italian are provided by HarperCollins and feature contemporary vocabulary and expressions—including everyday terms relating to business, computing, current events, tourism and many other topics.
Applications:
This dictionary is very complete and it has a lot of different applications related with the vocabulary. Among the different free tools for surfers we have:
- Word lookup for browser
- Word of the day
- Add to Google toolbar
- Add to My Yahoo®
- Add to my favourites
- Help
- Feedback
And for webmasters:
- Free content for websites
- Linking to the Dictionary
- Dictionary lookup box
- Script word lookup
- Partner with us
We have the English Language Forum, we also have the chance to construct my word list, there are two playgames one called hangman which is very interesting as it helps youto enrich your vocabulary and another one called the spelling bee which helps you to improve your listening skills and the match up which is very helpful with the synonyms “Match each word in the left column with its synonym on the right. When finished, click Answer to see the results”.
Waht’s inside the Dictionary/Thesaurus? :
This applications is divided in :
-Free:
- Medical dictionay
- Legal dictionary
- Financial dictionary
- Acronyms
- Idioms
- Encyclopaedia
- Wikipedia encyclopaedia
-Suscription:
A very curious part of this Free Dictionary is that you can also look up for anrticles aprt from words and if you do not remember exactly what you are trying to find you have the chance to search it by writing “starts with”, “ends with” and “text”.
But this Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus is not only used for “English-related” purposes. We also have the chance to look up things in these languages:
Customize your home page:
TheFreeDictionary.com now allows you to create your own personal homepage by adding and removing, dragging and dropping, and “using or losing” existing content windows. In addition, you can add your own bookmarks, weather information, horoscope, and RSS feeds from anywhere on the web.
Curiosities:
When entering The Frre Dictionary’s home page we have the chance to read the article of the day, to read what is on the news today, how important is today’s date (this day in history and today’s birthday), to read our Horoscope and the quotation of the day which is a very famous sentence of the day form an important character of the history and of course the weather. All of them very helpful, but as it has been mentioned above all these applications can be modified.
RESOURCES:
- Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus. The free dictionary by Farlex. Retrieved March 10th 09:10, 2011: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/.
- Delicious. Retrieved March 10th 09:30, 2011. http://www.delicious.com/
- Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 10th 09:45, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesaurus
