Collins launches free dictionary site

Collins has launched a dictionary site, www.collinsdictionary.com, that will give open, free access to 220,000 dictionary entries alongside synonyms, translations, word frequency graphs and illustrative Flickr photos.

(…)

Each result includes definitions, alternative meanings and word histories. Two million full sentence usage examples — taken from fiction, non-fiction, newspapers and magazines — help contextualise the words. Each definition has a word frequency graph, demonstrating the historical and contemporary popularity of the word over the last 500 years. The data is drawn directly from Collins’ analytical language database called the Collins Corpus and Google Ngrams, which monitors word usage in print and online sources.

Read more here…