Dictionary untouched by human hands

Thought all dictionaries were hand crafted by old men in dusty basements working late into the night? Not this one.

Wordnik, an online dictionary, uses automatic programmes to trawl the web and come up with definitions. It looks at

“…the texts of news feeds, archived broadcasts, the blogosphere, Twitter posts and dozens of other sources for the raw material of Wordnik citations, says Erin McKean, a founder of the company.

Then, when you search for a word, Wordnik shows the information it has found, with no editorial tinkering. Instead, readers get the full linguistic Monty.

“We don’t pre-select and pre-prune,” she said. “We show you what’s out there now. Then we let people decide whether to use a word or not.” (Source: New York Times)

So instead of the word having a static definition which may have been written many years ago, users of Wordnik can see the word’s current meaning or meanings from looking at the example sentences provided.

Take a look at the full article for more information.