Google Dictionary is an online dictionary service of

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

that can be accessed with the "''define''" operator and other similar phrases in

Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the World Wide Web, Web by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze an ...

. It is also available in

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

and as a

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

extension. The dictionary content is licensed from

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

's Oxford Languages. It is available in different languages, such as English, Spanish and French. The service also contains pronunciation audio, Google Translate, a word origin chart, Ngram Viewer, and word games, among other features for the English-language version. Originally available as a standalone service, it was integrated into Google Search, with the separate service discontinued in August 2011.

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

provides a similar dictionary service that also licenses dictionary data from Oxford Languages. Apple also licenses dictionary data from Oxford for its

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

products.

History

The service originated in

, and was launched as a standalone service (google.com/dictionary) in December 2009. Google displayed definitions from Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary for English until August 2010, when it switched to the Oxford American College Dictionary. After being integrated into

, the dictionary was discontinued as a separate service on August 5, 2011, and can now be accessed with the "define" operator or by simply searching for a word. The dictionary service is also still available in Google Translate and can be accessed by selecting a single word. Google has also released the service as an extension for Chrome. ,

licenses dictionary data from Oxford Languages for multiple languages, including

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

, Spanish, and German. On Arabic Language Day (December 18) in 2015, Google added an Arabic-language dictionary, available globally, to the service that showed definitions, translations, and example usages of the word in a sentence. In February 2017, online news website Daily Caller accused Google of changing the definition of the word "fascism" in Google Dictionary. It was later found that the definition was exactly from an external source and was not written by Google. Google added a Hindi dictionary from Rajpal & Sons licensed via Oxford Dictionaries which also supported transliteration and translation to the service in April 2017. In July 2017, the dictionary was made directly available by typing "dictionary" in Google Search and additional features such as a search box, autocomplete and search history were also added. In January 2018, a "Similar-sounding words" feature was added to the English dictionary which highlights words that sound similar such as "aesthetic" and "ascetic", "pray" and "prey", "conscientious" and "conscious" etc. "Google Word Coach" vocabulary game was made available along with dictionary searches and as a separate game on mobile devices in February 2018. In August 2018, Google Search added an English and Hindi dictionary for mobile users in India with an option to switch to the English only dictionary. A "learn to pronounce" option was added to the English dictionary in December 2018 which shows how a word is pronounced with its non-phonemic pronunciation respelling and audio in different accents (such as

and American) along with an option to slow the audio down, visemes for pronunciations were also added in April 2019.

Languages

Google displays dictionaries for the following languages licensed from

Oxford Dictionaries Oxford dictionary may refer to any dictionary published by Oxford University Press, particularly: Historical dictionaries * ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') * ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'', an abridgement of the ''OED'' Single-volu ...

which provides data from its own and other published dictionaries. See details for

datasets licensing for other languages here.

Notes

References

External links

*
Google Dictionary Extension for Google Chrome

Google Dictionary Online
— Provides a service via its JSON API * - Discussion about Google Dictionary and its sources on

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{{Google LLC

Dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

Internet properties established in 2009 Online dictionaries

History

Languages

See also

Notes

References

External links