Wordie: Dictionary: Comments

Comment by jennarenn, about 11 hours ago

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:24:20 +0000

dictionary.com now has *free* auditory pronunciation. I'm not too dismayed to learn that I've been mispronouncing the s-word.

Comment by chained_bear, 3 days ago

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:57:45 +0000

The Onion Historical Archives has an article about this.

Comment by cricket, 7 months ago

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:11:56 +0000

I like looking up "dictionary" in dictionaries and seeing how the definitions of themselves vary

Comment by jennarenn, 8 months ago

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:45:35 +0000

Ho. Lee. Cow.

Comment by uselessness, 8 months ago

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:03:32 +0000

Derren Brown memorized the dictionary.

Comment by inkhorn, about 1 year ago

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:48:04 +0000

Another fun fact:

Modern English is rooted almost equally in Latin, French and Germanic. The percentages, provided by Oxford Dictionaries, are below:

Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%

Comment by inkhorn, about 1 year ago

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:38:26 +0000

Fun Fact about English:

There are somewhere between 450,000 and 600,000 unique words in the various English dictionaries (OED, MW).