Before I explain how useful online dictionaries are, let me tell the whole truth: I must have several ancient dictionaries around me at home. For one, they are sometimes faster and offer the background story and language of many words. Also, they contain archaic vocabulary words. I love dying vocabulary words. When I picked Humdinger as the name of my e-zine, it was with the thought that the word humdinger is in danger of becoming archaic. I thought that in some way, I might preserve at least one word. Back to dictionaries, though. Writers need access to multiple vocabulary resources. If you write often, then you know this; if you don’t, you’ll learn soon. What I’d like to do is provide you with some great resources to check and bookmark if you find them useful.

Do you write freelance articles about surprising topics? Need specific words for a certain country, cuisine, or culture? Try this website, which provides pages of links to very unusual dictionaries and glossaries:

Glossarist World Glossaries and World Dictionaries at:
http://www.glossarist.com/glossaries/world-regions-countries-travel/

Do you need to know how to pronounce that odious word you copied from a dictionary and now have to read aloud for an audience?

MSN Encarta (claims to have 100,000 entries):
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/dictionaryhome.aspx

Would you like to access dictionaries to Spanish, French and Italian?

WordReference.com
http://www.wordreference.com/

Do you need to translate whole portions of text from one language to another (without having to hire someone to do it)?

Try one of my all-time favorites, AltaVista’s Babelfish:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

At Babelfish, you can copy and paste up to 150 words at a time. What a wonderful tool! Mind you, this isn’t for perfect translations, but it will provide enough for you to understand the meaning of the document in question or communicate something important. Incidentally, if you want to provide others with the opportunity to translate your site into multiple languages, Babelfish offers that too at:
http://www.altavista.com/help/free/free_searchbox_transl

Now that I’ve given you so many great resources, let’s add one more unusual one: a slang dictionary list website. Now you can find words people really wish you didn’t know. How authentic you can make your characters sound!

The Alternative Dictionaries
http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/

Note: Some of the slang dictionaries at the above site are pdf. files and some aren’t. Each dictionary varies in size, but the first language listed, Acadian, is not a great example of all the language available there. Keep in mind, though, that the slang provided is of the most colorful variety (not for the innocent).

Revitalize those lethargic manuscripts you have decorating desk space for a final polish, or write new articles, books, or novels with accurate, exuberant, bewitching vocabulary.

Good luck word hunting!

Pen to Paper~
Chris Goebel
Editor, Humdinger Literary E-zine
http://www.humdingerzine.com
Subscribe to Chris Goebel’s newsletter, Jack of Genre: Newsletter for Writers, at:
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