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I've had the reverse impression over recent years: dictionary sites have become so bloated and unusable, between ads, comment systems, inefficient JS, and abysm
by larkeith 8y ago
I've had the reverse impression over recent years: dictionary sites have become so bloated and unusable, between ads, comment systems, inefficient JS, and abysmal "mobile-friendly" pages I've gone back to my old hardcover whenever convenient. I imagine part of this is use-case, however: I tend to use a dictionary infrequently, mainly when I'm reading with the shelf within reach, so the overhead of launching an app or navigating to a website is a lot higher than practicing a second language, where you might keep the app open.
And of course it never lost its place as the canonical Scrabble-checker.
- Symbiote 8y agoI use Wiktionary — no ads, comments, and it's fast. My father had an "Official Scrabble Word List" book, which was just a list of words without definitions. An app would be even better for this: you could take a photo of the word, and it could give a simple yes/no without any chance of "accidentally" seeing other words.
- salutonmundo 8y ago+1 for Wiktionary. As for Scrabble, https://scrabble.hasbro.com/en-us/tools#dictionary https://scrabble.hasbro.com/en-us/tools#dictionary works just fine, although it needs JavaScript.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoFree dictionary sites are pretty appalling. Paid dictionary apps are great. I've never actually used the online OED, but I imagine it's great.
- bunderbunder 8y agoAgreed that the sites aren't so good. I went with Larousse's app, which isn't perfect, but works well. Their website, on the other hand, is fairly painful to use. Though, agreed with others that Wiktionary is good. It often offers higher-quality entries than the commercial ones, too.