Dictionary Building Resources

Dictionary Craft Tools

A practical guide for lexicographers, wordsmiths, and neologism architects.

MorDictionary does not merely define words.

We build them. We preserve them. We refine them. We sometimes invent them.

This page collects tools, communities, and reference materials useful for crafting dictionary entries, mining example sentences, and coining neologisms.

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Entry Construction Tools

Corpus & Usage Research

• Google Books Ngram Viewer — Google Ngram Viewer — Track historical frequency of words.
• COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) — english-corpora.org/coca — Modern American English usage patterns.
• British National Corpus — english-corpora.org/bnc — British English usage data.
• Sketch Engine — sketchengine.eu — Advanced corpus querying tool.

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Etymology Research

• Online Etymology Dictionary — etymonline.com — Quick-reference etymology.
• Wiktionary — wiktionary.org — Collaborative etymology chains.
• Perseus Digital Library — perseus.tufts.edu — Classical Greek and Latin texts.
• Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — oed.com — Historical English dictionary (subscription required).
• Webster’s 1828 Dictionary — webstersdictionary1828.com — Early American English reference.

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Pronunciation Tools

• IPA Chart — ipa chart
• Forvo — forvo.com — Crowdsourced pronunciation recordings.
• Wiktionary Audio Archives — commons pronunciation files

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Frequency & Register Checking

• Word Frequency Lists — wordfrequency.info
• Google Scholar — scholar.google.com — Academic register reference.
• Project Gutenberg — gutenberg.org — Literary corpora for historical usage.

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Example Sentence Craft

Sentence Mining Communities

• r/SentenceMiners (Reddit)
• c/SentenceMiners (Lemmy)

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Neologism Design

Neologism Communities

• Reddit — r/NeologismsHelp
• Lemmy — c/NeologismHelp
• Linguistics forums and word-creation discussion groups

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Recommended Dictionaries & Glossaries

General Dictionaries

• Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — oed.com
• Merriam-Webster — merriam-webster.com
• Wiktionary — wiktionary.org
• Wordnik — wordnik.com

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Specialized & Historical

• Green’s Dictionary of Slang — greensdictofslang.com
• Webster’s 1828 Dictionary — webstersdictionary1828.com
• Phrontistery — phrontistery.info — Obscure and rare vocabulary collections
• The Grandiloquent Dictionary — PDF edition — Unusual and sesquipedalian words
• Oxford Reference — oxfordreference.com — Subject glossaries (legal, theological, technical, etc.)

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Collaborative Lexicography Philosophy

Dictionary-making is no longer confined to ivory towers, but maybe we should try to minimize the slop a smidge. I mean, I love Urban Dictionary, but sometimes it’s a bit much.

Let’s have fun, but let’s try to make a functional dictionary at the same time.

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Philosophy

We oppose boring dictionaries.

A dictionary entry should:

• Inform
• Contextualize
• Illuminate
• Delight

A lexicon is not merely a record. It is a living archive of thought.

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See Also

• Neologism
• Sentence Mining
• Etymology
• MorDictionary Mission

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MorDictionary — A project of the Moribund Institute.