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Lexico was a dictionary website that provided a collection of English and Spanish dictionaries produced by Oxford University Press (OUP), the publishing house of the University of Oxford. While the dictionary content on Lexico came from OUP, this website was operated by
Dictionary.com Dictionary.com is an online dictionary whose domain was first registered on May 14, 1995. The primary content on Dictionary.com is a proprietary dictionary based on ''Random House Unabridged Dictionary'', with editors for the site providing new a ...
, whose eponymous website hosts dictionaries by other publishers such as Random House. The website was closed and redirected to Dictionary.com on 26 August 2022. Before the Lexico site was launched, the ''
Oxford Dictionary of English The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' (''ODE'') is a single-volume English dictionary published by Oxford University Press, first published in 1998 as ''The New Oxford Dictionary of English'' (''NODE''). The word "new" was dropped from the titl ...
'' and '' New Oxford American Dictionary'' were hosted by OUP's own website Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO), later known as Oxford Living Dictionaries. The dictionaries' definitions have also appeared in Google definition search and the
Dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
application on macOS, among others, licensed through the Oxford Dictionaries API.


History

In the 2000s, OUP allowed access to content of the ''
Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English The ''Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English'' is a one-volume dictionary published by Oxford University Press. It is intended for a family or upper secondary school readerships. The third edition (revised), published in 2008, ...
'' on a website called AskOxford.com. In 2010, Oxford Dictionaries Online was launched under oxforddictionaries.com, superseding the dictionary content of AskOxford.com. Buyers of the third edition of the ''
Oxford Dictionary of English The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' (''ODE'') is a single-volume English dictionary published by Oxford University Press, first published in 1998 as ''The New Oxford Dictionary of English'' (''NODE''). The word "new" was dropped from the titl ...
'', also published in 2010, were granted a one-year subscription to the website's subscription content. The website's English dictionaries incorporated content of the ''Oxford Dictionary of English'', '' New Oxford American Dictionary'', ''Oxford Thesaurus of English'', and ''Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus''. It also provided a Spanish monolingual dictionary and bilingual dictionaries between English and several languages. , it was updated every three months. In 2014, OUP launched Oxford Global Languages, an initiative to build lexical resources (bilingual dictionaries) of the world's languages, starting with Zulu and Northern Sotho online dictionaries released in 2015. In 2016, the free content of Oxford Dictionaries Online was rebranded as Oxford Living Dictionaries, and the subscription content as Oxford Dictionaries Premium. In June 2019, the free-of-charge dictionaries of English and Spanish were moved to Lexico.com, a collaboration between OUP and
Dictionary.com Dictionary.com is an online dictionary whose domain was first registered on May 14, 1995. The primary content on Dictionary.com is a proprietary dictionary based on ''Random House Unabridged Dictionary'', with editors for the site providing new a ...
, though with the lexicographic content continuing to be written solely by OUP staff. While the offer of the US English dictionary on Oxford Living Dictionaries was terminated upon the migration to Lexico except for words which the UK dictionary did not have entries for, the US dictionary became fully available again on Lexico in early 2020. "Lexico" was itself part of the former name of the company Dictionary.com, Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. In March 2020, the remaining Oxford Living Dictionaries websites, which hosted dictionaries made in the Global Languages programme, were closed. A statement from OUP said, "Rather than offering a dictionary website for every digitally under-resourced language, we will facilitate third parties to build products and services that best serve the needs of each individual language community. Our efforts will be focused on creating and providing the data that these third parties need." At the time of the closure, they hosted dictionaries of Zulu, Northern Sotho,
Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...
, Urdu, Tswana,
Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...
,
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
, Latvian,
Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language official in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa * Swahili culture Swahili culture is the culture of ...
, Hindi,
Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nati ...
,
Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...
, Tatar, Xhosa, Southern Quechua,
Tajik Tajik, Tadjik, Tadzhik or Tajikistani may refer to: * Someone or something related to Tajikistan * Tajiks, an ethnic group in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan * Tajik language, the official language of Tajikistan * Tajik (surname) * Tajik cu ...
, Tok Pisin,
Turkmen Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to: Peoples Historical ethnonym * Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages Ethnic groups * Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...
,
Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...
, and Greek. On 26 August 2022, Lexico was closed and redirected to Dictionary.com. Oxford Dictionaries Premium was still available.


Comparison with the ''Oxford English Dictionary''

The '' Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is a subscription service, while Lexico used the Oxford Dictionaries API to offer more modern versions of the ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' and ''New Oxford American Dictionary'' to users for free. The ''OED'' described its difference from Oxford Dictionaries, the predecessor to Lexico, as follows:
The dictionary content in Oxford Dictionaries focuses on current English and includes modern meanings and uses of words. Where words have more than one meaning, the most important and common meanings in modern English are given first, and less common and more specialist or technical uses are listed below. The ''OED'', on the other hand, is a historical dictionary and it forms a record of all the core words and meanings in English over more than 1,000 years, from Old English to the present day, and including many obsolete and historical terms. Meanings are ordered chronologically in the ''OED'', according to when they were first recorded in English ...


References

{{reflist English bilingual dictionaries Online English dictionaries Oxford dictionaries Spanish dictionaries Internet properties established in 2019 Internet properties disestablished in 2022 __FORCETOC__