Online free dictionary websites
Best picks for writing teachers

The number of online free dictionary websites rivals the number of supermarket cereal choices.

If you are going to engage a disparate group of students in writing, you need to know which Internet sites hold resources best suited to your students. Sometimes you'll think you can teach writing faster than you can find good resources to help you.

Here are a few dictionary sites you should bookmark for yourself and post for your students as you are teaching writing.

General dictionaries

Below are links to three online free dictionary websites that house general dictionaries and/or lists of specialized dictionaries you and your students can access for free.

Dictionary.com

Other online free dictionary websites have more to offer, but the easiest address to remember has to be Dictionary.com.

Dictionary.com is ideal for a quick definition. Its dictionary and thesaurus are available free — for the price of putting up with ads!

TheFreeDictionary.com

Ads are also an annoying feature of the TheFreeDictionary.com. The ad placement makes the page layout somewhat confusing. However, once you get past that trap, you'll find the site can be quite useful.

When you enter a word, you get a definition from one or more dictionaries. You also see synonyms and related words. Illustrations may be included.

English and writing teachers will appreciate the section of TheFreeDictionary.com that shows the word used in classic literature passages. That's pretty cool.

OneLook.com

On occasions when you give a writing prompt that requires students to use more than one dictionary, OneLook is the place to send students.

Using OneLook.com is like searching over a thousand online free dictionary websites at a time. OneLook is actually an index to 1044 dictionaries rather than a single dictionary.

When you type a word in the search box (you can use wild cards), you get a list of all the entries in all the dictionaries in which that word appears. I typed in hedgerow and got listings in 32 dictionaries.

I like OneLook because in teaching writing using nonfiction expository materials, students inevitably run across terms that don't appear to be used in the way a general dictionary defines them. OneLook makes dealing with those situations easy.

Besides general dictionaries, OneLook lets you search

• Specialized dictionaries (like art, business, medicine, technology)

• Foreign language dictionaries

• Reverse dictionary.

You can also get a translation of a word or phrase.

Links to specialized dictionaries

Sometimes a general online free dictionary just won't do. You might need a dictionary of literary terms, a rhyming dictionary, or reverse dictionary.

Or your students might need dictionaries related to other academic subjects they are studying. For those situations, you need to know where to find specialized dictionaries.

I've already mentioned the OneLook contains specialized dictionaries. Another source for all sorts of exotic specialized dictionaries is the website run by the University of Paderborn.

University of Paderborn

This German University website lists by categories niche dictionaries available free on the web.

You'll find such such things as a:

• Hacker's dictionary.

• Dictionary of acronyms.

• Smiley dictionary.

• Dictionary of poker.

The Paderborn list of dictionaries is a good way to show students the range of English language usage. They will see that almost every field has its own specialized vocabulary.

Online Etymology Dictionary

If you want to know about where an English word came from or what it meant to the people who used it in the earliest surviving documents, the free online etymology dictionary is the place to look.

If your students are interested in word histories, they might even decide to sponsor a word for a month. Sponsorships are $10 and fund the free site.

Dictionary use resources

Most Internet dictionary sites (both subscription and online free dictionary websites) have tools for teaching students about dictionaries and their use.

Here are three dictionary publishers' sites that offer a bit more than the usual fare.

AlphaDictionary.com

Check AlphaDictionary.com for resources for teaching spelling. You'll find, among other things, a list of 250 false cognates carefully explained and a list with explanations of the most often misspelled English words. The site also has quizzes your students can take to test their skills.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

At AskOxford.com, you can look up up words in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

If you have young students in your household, check out their activities and worksheets downloads.

YourDictionary.com

Dictionaries and language learning activities geared to students, teachers, and ESL learners are the draw at YourDictionary.com, which gives solid information without being stodgy.

An audio pronunciation system lets you hear words as well as view them. That's a great help to students whose home language is not English or whose environment is what is euphemistically called "not linguistically rich."