This is to announce to our friends in the Agora that the American Heritage Dictionary is now online at yourDictionary.  Now when you look up a word on the home page, you will be accessing the 4th edition of the AHD.

It’s taken quite a bit of work on our part to get it up and some of the functionality is in the works.  But we’re really glad to have it here.  Please let us know what you think.

Brad Ross-MacLeod
yourDictionary.com

Woo, I like-ee. Implementation of the YD-AHD dictionary which has illustrations; audio pronunciations of the words; better definitions; acronym dictionary of abbreviations; best word etymologies; etc. (see http://www.yourdictionary.com/dicthelp.html).... My head is so spun I’m sounding like an ad…

Do these improvements represent a late night or two Brad?

Kurt

I have no reason to doubt the worthiness of the AHD, but I have to say that the ease of use of the on-line version is inferior to the MW.

Two points:

1.  If the search word is correctly typed and there is only one hit, the idea of presenting me with a list of one word and inviting to make a choice is a rather outdated piece of design.

2.  Being a very bad typist, I frequently msiptye things.  the MW tended either to give me a list that contained what I intended to type or to tempt me to investigate some other interesting word.  The AHD is unforgiving of the dysfunctional keyboard operator.

Sorry, no words matching "acronaym" were found

:-[

[quote author=DerekB link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#2 date=11/06/02 at 13:29:59]
2.  Being a very bad typist, I frequently msiptye things.  

This was wonderful—somebody please give me a name for this phenomenon!  

[quote author=Quaternity link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#1 date=11/02/02 at 09:08:21]Do these improvements represent a late night or two Brad?

Kurt

Not on my part.  We have a new server administrator/programmer who has been logging lots of hours.  The thing is, we got the AHD database but it didn’t come with any of the scripts or programming tools.  That is why many features are not yet active.  We’re building it from scratch.

[quote author=DerekB link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#2 date=11/06/02 at 13:29:59]Two points:

1.  If the search word is correctly typed and there is only one hit, the idea of presenting me with a list of one word and inviting to make a choice is a rather outdated piece of design.

2.  Being a very bad typist, I frequently msiptye things.  the MW tended either to give me a list that contained what I intended to type or to tempt me to investigate some other interesting word.  The AHD is unforgiving of the dysfunctional keyboard operator.

1.  We prefer the ease of the one-step lookup process and are working to see how to do this in the context of our new scripts.  We realize the inconvenience and hope to make this simpler.

2.  Another feature we hope to implement.

As I mentioned in my previous post, all we got from Houghton-Mifflin was the database.  Out contract with Merriam-Webster had already expired and they were very understanding in letting us keep the MW on the front page while we were programming the AHD.  But we had to remove the MW and so we put up the AHD without all of the features and functionality that we would have wished (we still don’t have the thesaurus function up yet either).  We’re working on making our dictionary lookup the best on the web.

Brad

[quote author=tamisaac link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#3 date=11/06/02 at 15:07:22]This was wonderful—somebody please give me a name for this phenomenon!

Whatever it is, it’s the same word Ekkis is looking for - for what he calls "punctuating a point".

Grant

[quote author=tamisaac link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#3 date=11/06/02 at 15:07:22]
This was wonderful—somebody please give me a name for this phenomenon!  

"Comic genius"!   ;D

[quote author=DerekB link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#7 date=11/07/02 at 12:16:17]
"Comic genius"!   ;D

It was intentional?   :-[  I’m gullible.  Good joke!

Anyway, so there’s no way to look up synonyms yet?  Brad, any idea when that will be up?  I like hopping from word to word.  (Oh yeah, it’s useful too).  :)

Wow, I guess I should read this "news" section more often.  Here I’ve been lugging my OED around the house with me.

I’m looking forward to a better interface. You try it - look up ‘ilk’. What you get is three ‘ilk’s listed with nothing to indicate which is what. And the third proves to be a definition for a different word altogether!

There is a word for this: user-hostile.

Bryn

[quote author=brynbaker link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#10 date=01/08/03 at 18:13:08]I’m looking forward to a better interface. You try it - look up ‘ilk’. What you get is three ‘ilk’s listed with nothing to indicate which is what. And the third proves to be a definition for a different word altogether!

There is a word for this: user-hostile.

Bryn

I think that’s too strong a word.  

[duck]
I think it was designed by the Germans, not the French.  
[/duck]

;D

[hr]

My main complaint is that the Unicode characters that display vowels with macrons and other diacritical marks do not display properly when pasted into a reply on the board, but that’s probably a BBS problem, not a dictionary problem.  I have copied and pasted a pronounciation link (gunwale) that worked.  

[quote author=Stargzer link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#11 date=01/08/03 at 18:29:17]
I think that’s too strong a word.  

I won’t retract. User friendly would be something like:
ilk[/b n, sort or tribeilkvi, ...
or see also,
ilks n, ...

[quote author=brynbaker link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#12 date=01/10/03 at 11:28:32]
I won’t retract. User friendly would be something like:
ilk[/b n, sort or tribeilkvi, ...
or see also,
ilks n, ...

[quote author=Stargzer link=board=news;num=1036212046;start=0#13 date=01/10/03 at 13:37:22]
It was a Politically Incorrect reference by an Ugly American to the French reputation for being hostile to English-speakers (which I’m sure is not true…

Are you really sure?

I’ve heard the the stereotype is very untrue of the French as a whole - but not of Parisians…  ::)