I discovered a website a few months ago that is proving to be pretty nifty when I need to really drill down on a particular word. OneLook.com lets you search for a word and gives you links to a range of definitions, from general Dictionaries to specialised ones. It also allows you to find related words, rhyming words etc.

I have found it particularly useful when proofreading and coming across specialised language and when writing and needing to be absolutely certain that I’m using an unusual word correctly.

I made a mini video to show how it works.

Transcript:

So I’m going to show you a nifty little website that I’ve discovered quite recently, Onelook.com, and it is a way to search multiple dictionaries for one word.

As you can see on the homepage, you can also use search operators to do more specific searches, but I’ll just show you what it does.

So if we type in Translator and go to the search results, the first thing you see on the right here is a basic definition. But what you have here on the left is links to the definitions of the word translator in Merriam Webster, Oxford dictionaries, American heritage dictionary, Collin’s English dictionary, and so on. These are the general dictionaries. And as you go further down, there are also specialised dictionaries , a specialised art dictionary, business, computing, medicine and so on.

And if you scroll back up to the top, you can see here on the right, you can also look at words that are similar to translator, usage, examples, adjectives that describe translator, words that often appear near translator, rhymes even, or invented words related to translator.

So if you need to really look into the detail of a word, if you feel like the basic definition you’re getting isn’t quite what you need, then onelook.com is definitely worth an explore.

Image credit: Joshua Hoehne

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