The Wordsmyth Comprehensive Dictionary Suite combines our Advanced Dictionary-Thesaurus with two additional Wordsmyth dictionaries, the Intermediate Dictionary-Thesaurus for upper elementary school students, and the Beginner’s Dictionary-Thesaurus for English language learners. Within the suite, users may easily move up or down between the levels to find simpler or more advanced definitions and example sentences for particular words.
Using the buttons beneath the search box, users can select their default dictionary level (see screenshot) and get results from that dictionary with every search. Once in an entry, however, they can check for definitions and examples from other dictionaries for the same word if they desire.
Advanced Dictionary
The highest level of our dictionaries is called the “Advanced Dictionary.” The Advanced Dictionary is suited to the needs of adults and students from middle-school age and up. It currently contains 60,000 headwords, with example sentences for nearly 17,000 words, adding up to a total of nearly 50,000 examples. Like all of our dictionaries, the Advanced Dictionary has both text and audio pronunciations for all words, as well as thousands of photographs and artist-created illustrations.
It was for the Advanced Dictionary that the Wordsmyth team developed its integrated thesaurus, a source for synonyms, antonyms, and similar words. We call it an “integrated” thesaurus because thesaurus information is matched with individual senses (meanings) of words so that, for example, synonyms for the headword “hot” referring to temperature, “hot” referring to spiciness of food, and “hot” referring to popularity are matched with their appropriate definitions in the entry for “hot.” The synonyms appear directly under each pertinent definition in the dictionary entry. There is no need to click to go to a different page to access the thesaurus information.
Intermediate Dictionary
The next level down from the Advanced Dictionary is the “Intermediate Dictionary.” As in the Advanced Dictionary, thesaurus information is built in and matched with particular senses of words. The Intermediate Dictionary was written for children at the upper elementary level. The definitions are written with simpler vocabulary and sentence structure than those written for the Advanced Dictionary. The Intermediate Dictionary contains approximately 14,000 headwords and contains 23,000 full-sentence examples. Additionally, all the headwords for the Intermediate Dictionary, as well as all the example sentences for headwords, have been translated into Spanish and Chinese. (Note also that each sense of every headword is individually translated.) These translations are available to our subscribers and appear in the entries when the feature is selected by the user. (Spanish and Chinese headword translations also appear in the other Wordsmyth dictionaries for these same words.)
Beginner’s Dictionary
The “Beginner’s Dictionary” is a dictionary that is geared toward adult literacy and adult ESL. The Beginner’s Dictionary contains approximately 5000 headwords written in a concise but simple style. The dictionary contains over 8,000 example sentences.
A feature developed specifically for the Beginner’s Dictionary is the Word Builder. Word Builder displays words that are built on the headword that is looked up. For example, with the headword “cool,” we list the words “cooler” (a type of refrigerator) and “coolant” in the Word Builder along with a short definition of each of these additional words. While derivations of headwords (e.g., “coolly” and “coolness”) are listed for entries at all dictionary levels, the Word Builder, developed for the Beginner’s Dictionary, goes a step further, particularly in defining the additional words.
Wordsmyth’s Comprehensive Dictionary has a companion app—Wordsmyth Student & ELL Dictionary—available for both Android and iOS devices. The app provides for a better user experience on mobile devices and is accessible with or without the internet. Access to three dictionary levels from one headword lookup supports students and English language learners of all ages and all levels. Check out the full app description.
