Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus

Might you consider upgrading this “word of the day” automatic feature? Granted, I acknowledge the disclaimer that the word on every given day is randomly generated. That, however, is why the user can’t adjust it, not a fact that makes it impervious to the developer modifying the software. The problem as I see it is simply, if you will, that the words are too simple. My experience with such novelties is that they highlight words not usually found in common usage, in order to expand one’s vocabulary. Your app, on the other hand, serves up a daily dose of hopelessly commonplace nouns and verbs; for example, “rodeo” and “nibble”, respectively, as two recent offerings. As such, the feature is uninformative at best and, unless one shuts down the notifications entirely, a nuisance. The distinguished OED should expand the mind and the vocabulary of the educated user, not cater to popularity in pursuing the least common denominator among the crowd. Please consider this sensible upgrade to your software. Thank you for your attention to my concern, meant constructively of course as a longtime faithful adherent to the OED.

A quick note on the example sentences. It would be optimal if examples would be drawn from classic examples of good writing. Please watch your blatantly misogynistic language. For “mercenary”, the example sentence is “She’s nothing but a mercenary little gold-digger”. Seeing that the vast majority of professional “mercenaries” are men, it would be easy to come up with a sentence that does not viciously target women”. Perhaps we can refer to a business executive with mercenary tactics; there, it doesn’t even specify gender. I chose the Oxford English Dictionary (not American) because I wanted a definitive source for difficult English words. Interestingly, the strength of this dictionary is in colloquial American words. Although the name “Oxford” evokes the idea of old books and traditional education, if you read classic English literature by famous authors from the 18th or 19th centuries, you would be hard pressed to find definitions on this app. I found it terribly ironic that the Dictionary app or Google has more definitions than OED. I had the same problem with an American novel from the 20th century. It appears that the OED app is focused on modern newspapers and light fiction. I would pay handsomely for an app that has definitions for ALL non-technical English words; yes even the obsolete, archaic, and literary. I have no interest in reading blogs. I like to be able to read any book going as far back as Early Modern English, and find the definitions here.

I bought this primarily to replace my old Oxford Spanish Dictionary app, hoping to be able to use the English dictionaries as well as benefit from an updated application. The other dictionaries are all there but honestly, unless you speak or are learning multiple languages, there isn’t much need for all those other language dictionaries. The. Oxford Dictionary of English is most definitely not the OED. Not only is it abridged but all the quotes and archaic meanings are also not included. It’s really just another good but limited dictionary of English. I am still very happy to have the Oxford Spanish Dictionary on my tablet. In my experience it is one of the best in terms of content and thoroughness, capturing the various nuances of usage in both English and Spanish. The biggest disappointment with the new application is the slowness of the response. Not only do you have to go through the effort to pick your dictionary but with the foreign languages you then must pick the direction for translation and then type in your search word. Then the response from the dictionary is very slow, it can take several seconds for the application to respond with matching terms. The older interface was much faster. It appears that making the application all inclusive slowed everything down by an order of magnitude.