Type of site | Reference ( dictionary, thesaurus, etc.) |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | Wordnik Society, Inc. |
Created by | Wordnik Society Inc. |
URL |
www |
Registration | Optional |
Users | 81,556 (as of 20 January 2012 [update]) |
Launched | June 2009 |
Wordnik, a nonprofit organization, is an online English dictionary and language resource that provides dictionary and thesaurus content. [1] Some of the content is based on print dictionaries such as the Century Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, WordNet, and GCIDE. Wordnik has collected a corpus of billions of words which it uses to display example sentences, allowing it to provide information on a much larger set of words than a typical dictionary. Wordnik uses as many real examples as possible when defining a word. [1] [2]
Wiktionary, the free open dictionary project, is one major source of words and citations used by Wordnik.
Wordnik.com was launched as a closed beta in February 2008 [3] [4] and opened to all in June 2009. [5] Cofounders of the site are CEO Erin McKean, editorial director Grant Barrett, and chief computational lexicographer Orion Montoya, and head of engineering Anthony Tam. [6] [4] McKean, Barrett, and Montoya all formerly worked in the US Dictionaries Department of Oxford University Press. [4] [7] [8] The startup company was originally headquartered in San Mateo, California. [9]
In September 2009, Wordnik purchased the social language site Wordie.org. All Wordie.org accounts and data were subsequently transferred to Wordnik. [10]
Wordnik's material is sourced from the Internet by automatic programs. It then shows readers the information regarding a certain word without any editorial influence. [2] Wordnik does not allow for user-contributed definitions, but seems to assert that it may allow for this in the future. [1]
In January 2011, McKean relaunched the company as Reverb Technologies, Inc. in Palo Alto, with Wordnik co-founder Anthony Tam. [11] [12] [13] [14]
Under the name Reverb, they kept operating Wordnik.com, but also expanded its technology to other services and products, including "Reverb for Publishers" which was a plug-in for blogs to find related articles. [11]
The company began a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 with the purpose of finding and adding a million words to Wordnik that had not yet been included in major English dictionaries. [15]
As of 14 January 2012 [update], Wordnik Zeitgeist reports that, [16]
Wordnik is billions of words, 971,860,842 example sentences, 6,925,967 unique words, 231,628 comments, 178,718 tags, 121,432 pronunciations, 77,736 favorites and 1,022,649 words in 32,703 lists created by 81,138 Wordniks.
— Wordnik Zeitgeist
In 2008 McKean founded Wordnik, the world's largest online English dictionary (in terms of the number of words)
Reverb Technologies Vice President of Engineering and Technical Co-founder Tony Tam
Founded: 2011. Location: Palo Alto, CA 94301. Contacts: Erin McKean. Employees: 5.
Type of site | Reference ( dictionary, thesaurus, etc.) |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | Wordnik Society, Inc. |
Created by | Wordnik Society Inc. |
URL |
www |
Registration | Optional |
Users | 81,556 (as of 20 January 2012 [update]) |
Launched | June 2009 |
Wordnik, a nonprofit organization, is an online English dictionary and language resource that provides dictionary and thesaurus content. [1] Some of the content is based on print dictionaries such as the Century Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, WordNet, and GCIDE. Wordnik has collected a corpus of billions of words which it uses to display example sentences, allowing it to provide information on a much larger set of words than a typical dictionary. Wordnik uses as many real examples as possible when defining a word. [1] [2]
Wiktionary, the free open dictionary project, is one major source of words and citations used by Wordnik.
Wordnik.com was launched as a closed beta in February 2008 [3] [4] and opened to all in June 2009. [5] Cofounders of the site are CEO Erin McKean, editorial director Grant Barrett, and chief computational lexicographer Orion Montoya, and head of engineering Anthony Tam. [6] [4] McKean, Barrett, and Montoya all formerly worked in the US Dictionaries Department of Oxford University Press. [4] [7] [8] The startup company was originally headquartered in San Mateo, California. [9]
In September 2009, Wordnik purchased the social language site Wordie.org. All Wordie.org accounts and data were subsequently transferred to Wordnik. [10]
Wordnik's material is sourced from the Internet by automatic programs. It then shows readers the information regarding a certain word without any editorial influence. [2] Wordnik does not allow for user-contributed definitions, but seems to assert that it may allow for this in the future. [1]
In January 2011, McKean relaunched the company as Reverb Technologies, Inc. in Palo Alto, with Wordnik co-founder Anthony Tam. [11] [12] [13] [14]
Under the name Reverb, they kept operating Wordnik.com, but also expanded its technology to other services and products, including "Reverb for Publishers" which was a plug-in for blogs to find related articles. [11]
The company began a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 with the purpose of finding and adding a million words to Wordnik that had not yet been included in major English dictionaries. [15]
As of 14 January 2012 [update], Wordnik Zeitgeist reports that, [16]
Wordnik is billions of words, 971,860,842 example sentences, 6,925,967 unique words, 231,628 comments, 178,718 tags, 121,432 pronunciations, 77,736 favorites and 1,022,649 words in 32,703 lists created by 81,138 Wordniks.
— Wordnik Zeitgeist
In 2008 McKean founded Wordnik, the world's largest online English dictionary (in terms of the number of words)
Reverb Technologies Vice President of Engineering and Technical Co-founder Tony Tam
Founded: 2011. Location: Palo Alto, CA 94301. Contacts: Erin McKean. Employees: 5.