Online Dictionaries & thesauri

Cambridge University Press has been publishing dictionaries for learners of English since 1995. Cambridge Dictionaries Online began offering these dictionaries completely free of charge in 1999 — and today, Cambridge Dictionary is still growing.

The award-winning Macmillan English Dictionary was first published in 2002 in both British English and American English. Crafted by teams of lexicographers in Great Britain and the United States, it had as its source a corpus, a database containing millions of examples of English as used around the world. Extensive analysis of this corpus of real spoken and written text, using state-of-the-art technology, allowed the dictionary writers to reveal fresh information about how and when words are used.

In 2007, the 2nd Edition of Macmillan English Dictionary was published with carefully researched content for learners of English around the world. An example of this content is the information provided in the so-called 'Get it right!' boxes.

For more than 150 years, in print and now online, Merriam-Webster has been America's leading and most-trusted provider of language information.

Each month, our Web sites offer guidance to more than 40 million visitors. In print, our publications include Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (among the best-selling books in American history) and newly published dictionaries for English-language learners.

All Merriam-Webster products and services are backed by the largest team of professional dictionary editors and writers in America, and one of the largest in the world.

We have an incredibly diverse publishing programme, which often surprises people who are expecting a traditional university press offering.

We publish in many countries, in more than 40 languages, and in a variety of formats–print and digital.

Our products cover an extremely broad academic and educational spectrum, and we aim to make our content available to our users in whichever format suits them best.

We publish for all audiences–from pre-school to secondary level schoolchildren; students to academics; general readers to researchers; individuals to institutions.

As a department of the University of Oxford our worldwide publishing furthers the University's objectives of excellence in scholarship, research, and education. Our main criteria when evaluating a new title for publication are its quality and whether it supports those aims of furthering education and disseminating knowledge.