''The Free Dictionary'' is an American

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" o ...

dictionary and

encyclopedia An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

that aggregates information from various sources.

Content

The site cross-references the contents of ''

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'' (''AHD'') is an American English, American dictionary of English published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969. ...

'', the ''

Collins English Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. The edition of the dictionary in 1979 with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, w ...

'', the ''

Columbia Encyclopedia The ''Columbia Encyclopedia'' is a one-volume encyclopedia produced by Columbia University Press and, in the last edition, sold by the Gale Group. First published in 1935, and continuing its relationship with Columbia University, the encyclope ...

'', the ''Computer Desktop Encyclopedia'', the ''

Hutchinson Encyclopedia The ''Hutchinson Encyclopedia'' is an English-language general encyclopedia. It is a single volume designed for use in the home, libraries and schools. It attempts to be readable by reducing the use of technical language. A small subset of the Enc ...

'' (subscription), and

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read ref ...

, as well as the

Acronym Finder Acronym Finder (AF) is a free, online, searchable dictionary and database of abbreviations (acronyms, initialisms, and others) and their meanings. The entries are classified into categories such as ''Information Technology, Military/Government, ...

database, several financial dictionaries,

legal dictionaries Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...

, and other content. It has a feature that allows a user to preview an article while positioning the mouse cursor over a link. One can also double-click on any word to look it up in the dictionary.

Site operator

The site is run by Farlex, Inc., located in Huntingdon Valley,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

. Farlex also maintains a companion title, ''The Free Library'', an online library of out-of-copyright classic books as well as a collection of periodicals of over four million articles dating back to 1984, and definition-of.com, a community dictionary of

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and usage (language), linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of p ...

and other terms.

Wikipedia Mirror

content is hosted at the sub-domain encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com, which is excluded from

search-engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

indexing in its entirety by Farlex with the use of

meta tag Meta elements are tags used in HTML and XHTML documents to provide structured metadata about a Web page. They are part of a web page's head section. Multiple Meta elements with different attributes can be used on the same page. Meta elements ca ...

s. This is done to avoid duplicate content in the search-engine results and prevent user traffic that would otherwise go to Wikipedia.

''The Free Library''

''The Free Library'' has a separate homepage. It is a free reference website that offers full-text versions of classic literary works by hundreds of authors. It is also a

news aggregator In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, po ...

, offering articles from a large collection of periodicals containing over four million articles dating back to 1984. Newly published articles are added to the site daily. The site comprises a selection of articles from open-access journals that can in many cases also be found on a journal's own website. It is a sister site to ''The Free Dictionary'' and usage examples in the form of "references in classic literature" taken from the site's collection are used on ''The Free Dictionary'''s definition pages. In addition, double-clicking on a word in the site's collection of reference materials brings up the word's definition on ''The Free Dictionary''.

References

External links