Merriam-Webster Offering Open Dictionary

Merriam-Webster last week announced the "Open Dictionary," which they describe as "a real-time chronicle of new words and senses based entirely on contributions from its users." It's available at http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/ .

The front page has the most recent entries, as well as links to browse the dictionary and a form to search the dictionary. I browsed the entries by the most recent ones submitted. (You can also browse them alphabetically.) There are over 2000 entries. Some of them are clever -- ("grammarchy (noun) : Philosophy concerned with the abolition of grammar"), some of them appear to be slang ("Chillaxing (adverb) : to relax and /or be lazy"), and some were words that I use regularly ("automagically (adjective) : Mysteriously and without human intervention").

As you might expect from the fact that it's open contribution, the quality of the submissions are uneven. Some of the definitions are misspelled, etc. But for the most part they're okay, as well as fun to browse through. And of course, you are welcome to submit your own.

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