15
votes
What good reference works on English are available?
Historical Resources
These are books of possible interest to people who are investigating word and phrase origins and want to know what meanings those words or phrases were said to have at various ...
11
votes
Accepted
What sort of resource request questions do we accept on meta?
Requests for resources that help the community in doing research for better questions and answers should be on-topic on ELU meta.
This actually goes against our established SE policy that meta should ...
NVZMod
- 22.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Website to see frequency of use of words together
Some of the English-Corpora provide the function you want. The English-Corpora interface, and the concepts involved, may present you with a steep learning curve, but the tools there are powerful.
For ...
- 32.8k
11
votes
"Lexico" will be gone in less than a month
It doesn't say, and it's unlikely, that the ODE (Oxford Dictionary of English) and NOAD (New Oxford American Dictionary) will be available on Dictionary.com, so it looks like we're losing gratis ...
- 1,742
9
votes
Accepted
RIP Oxford “living” Dictionaries
Mehhhhhhh, the name change isn't worth doing mass edits over. Nor is the change in URL, since you can click on most old URLs and be taken to the right page on the new site. There are many thousands of ...
LaurelMod
- 66.4k
9
votes
Accepted
What resources do I need to consult before asking a question?
Asking questions
Many questions can be easily answered by searching for a word, phrase, or idiom in a free online dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, and even some grammar questions (such as which ...
LaurelMod
- 66.4k
8
votes
Comparison/contrast dictionaries of synonyms
A very nice book which seems to be exactly what you want is the following:
Penguin guide to synonyms and related words
For a large number of words it analyses the nuances of the different synonyms.
...
- 270
8
votes
Are there any proper guidelines to write an answer?
Accessibility vs Discrimination
I removed your pictures of text and requested an actual citation in their stead because text should be represented as text, not as pictures. It all comes down to ...
tchristMod
- 135k
8
votes
Does Lexico have dictionary entries in American English?
The Lexico FAQs say that this is no longer possible in general:
When searching in the English Dictionary, a toggle between US and UK English is no longer provided. We treat all of English as one ...
- 81.9k
7
votes
Book to learn Old English
When I took Old English as an undergrad we used Bright's Old English Grammar & Reader, which gives a decent start. I'm sure there are other beginning books you can find, perhaps on Amazon.
...
- 152k
7
votes
"Lexico" will be gone in less than a month
Dictionary.com uses two main sources:
DICTIONARY.COM UNABRIDGED
BASED ON THE RANDOM HOUSE UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY, © RANDOM HOUSE, INC. 2022
COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY - COMPLETE & UNABRIDGED 2012 ...
Andrew LeachMod
- 102k
7
votes
Is Merriam Webster dictionary an outdated and unreliable dictionary?
No M-W is neither outdated or unreliable. It has an active staff of lexicographers working day and... well day... adding news words, marking old ones as obsolete, etc.
It is the most reliable American ...
- 71.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Are there any dictionaries for AAE?
If you are interested in particular in African American slang, two useful mainstream resources are Clarence Major, From Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (1994) and Geneva ...
- 163k
6
votes
Is Merriam Webster dictionary an outdated and unreliable dictionary?
Tangential to the original question, which remains valid, I want to note here that you've misunderstood Araucaria's comment. I don't think Araucaria is anti-Webster, they were responding to a comment ...
- 8,610
5
votes
What is the point of migrating all resource requests to Meta?
tl;dr It was the simplest way to take the questions off Main.
I've wondered about it, but perhaps one reason is that providing resource suggestions is about how to use the site: at least where to ...
- 38.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Dictionary that provides all correct usages of words
Short answer:
No, there's no perfectly correct dictionary, but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) will probably get you what you want.
Longer answer:
There are a number of issues you bring up.
'...
- 71.5k
5
votes
Best online slang dictionary for old slang
Green's Dictionary of Slang is a highly regarded and well-curated dictionary that I would feel safe calling "the best online slang dictionary" in a holistic sense. The website is easy to use, and ...
- 22.4k
5
votes
Accepted
How to find uncommon synonyms
The meaning of the question seems clear to me (I say this as there seems to be some confusion in the comments): get all synonyms of the word in question, and return the ones that are least commonly ...
- 23.1k
5
votes
As a native English speaker, what source should I use to teach non-native speakers writing?
As a TEFL trainer, I always found R. Murphy's English Grammar in Use very useful, especially for new native Engish speaking teachers who didn't have much knowledge of their own grammar, as they ...
- 183
5
votes
Historical explanation of relationship between graphemes and phonemes
I recommend David Crystal's books, and especially his Cambridge Language Encyclopedias:
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (3rd edition)
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd ...
- 108k
5
votes
Where does it say that resources are off-topic on main?
The on-topic help page says what questions are welcome:
Questions on the following topics are welcomed here:
• Word choice and usage
• Grammar
• Etymology (history of words’ development)
• Dialect ...
Andrew LeachMod
- 102k
5
votes
Where does it say that resources are off-topic on main?
Resource requests are "shopping list" questions, and are inherently unsuitable for all SE sites, not just EL&U. The reasons why are discussed on Meta and in a blog post by Jeff Atwood.
Summary ...
- 1,348
5
votes
Where does it say that resources are off-topic on main?
Form the help centre's What types of questions should I avoid asking? page (I quoted only the relevant parts):
What types of questions should I avoid asking?
To prevent your question from being ...
- 7,148
5
votes
Website to see frequency of use of words together
Google n-grams viewer provides some of that information. It shows the frequency with which 1, 2, 3 and 4 word combinations appear in a corpus of books, and additionally, shows the frequency against ...
- 865
5
votes
Resources for finding early uses of words?
EL&U Meta's very own community-wiki-based question What good reference works on English are available? includes an answer headed "Historical Resources" that consists of sections devoted ...
- 163k
5
votes
What are the free resources to learn english online?
This answer is more relevant to English Language Learners and indeed it's well answered with lots of resources in the Meta on that site: Resources for learning English. Some of the resources mentioned ...
Andrew LeachMod
- 102k
5
votes
Where can I find books from the late 17th/early 18th century about English grammar and phonology?
Although Google Books and Hathitrust report multiple copies of both Aickin's grammar and Miège's grammar, none of the copies are available for reading in full on those sites. It is unclear to me what ...
- 163k
5
votes
Is Merriam Webster dictionary an outdated and unreliable dictionary?
The only thing I can think of to quibble with is the fact that MW uses its own special notation to describe pronunciations, instead of using IPA.
On the other hand, the IPA transcriptions used by ...
- 18.5k
4
votes
Accepted
Good resources for collocations
Does this link help at all? I just downloaded it and it's working well.
Free download Oxford collocations Dictionary
- 1,032
4
votes
Comparison/contrast dictionaries of synonyms
Online, Merriam-Webster often has a "Synonym Discussion" under its Dictionary entries that directly compares and contrasts selected synonyms. For example, under the entry for swing it says in part
...
- 22.8k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible