Collins English Dictionary Explained

March 2023.

The Collins English Dictionary is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow^{[1] [2]} and was first published in 1979.

Corpus

The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is continually updated and has over 20 billion words.^{[3] [4]}

Editions

• The current edition is the 14th; it was published on 31 August 2023, with more than 732,000 words, meanings, and phrases (not 730,000 headwords) and 9,500 place names and 7,300 biographies.^[4] A newer edition of the 14th edition was published on 7 May 2024.^[5]
• The previous edition was the 13th edition, which was published in November 2018.^[6]
• A special "30th Anniversary" 10th edition was published in 2010.
• Earlier editions were published once every 3 or 4 years.

History

The 1979 edition of the dictionary, with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, was the first British English dictionary to be typeset from the output from a computer database in a specified format. This meant that every aspect of an entry was handled by a different editor using different forms or templates. Once all the entries for an entry had been assembled, they were passed on to be keyed into the slowly assembled dictionary database which was completed for the typesetting of the first edition.

The computer database used for the 1979 edition was donated to the ACL Data Collection Initiative.^{[7] [8]}

In a later edition, they increasingly used the Bank of English established by John McHardy Sinclair at COBUILD to provide typical citations rather than examples composed by the lexicographer.

CollinsDictionary.com

The unabridged Collins English Dictionary was published on the web on 31 December 2011 on CollinsDictionary.com, along with the unabridged dictionaries of French, German, Spanish and Italian.^[9] The site also includes example sentences showing word usage from the Collins Bank of English Corpus, word frequencies and trends from the Google Ngrams project, and word images from Flickr.

In August 2012, CollinsDictionary.com introduced crowd-sourcing for neologisms,^{[10] [11] [12]} whilst still maintaining overall editorial control to remain distinct from Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary. This followed an earlier launch of a discussion forum for neologisms in 2004.^[13]

In May 2015, CollinsDictionary.com added 6,500 new Scrabble words to their Collins Scrabble Words dictionary. The words are based on terms related to and influenced by slang, social media, food, technology, and more.^[14]

External links

• CollinsDictionary.com – Collins English Dictionary, American English Dictionary, Thesaurus

Notes and References

1. News: 2014-10-22 . Why Scotland is the last word in dictionaries . 2025-10-25 . . en-GB.
2. Web site: History. www.harpercollins.co.uk. HarperCollins. 11 June 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190611134631/https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/corporate/about-us/history/. 11 June 2019. Glasgow. 2015. live.
3. Web site: Mouriquand . David . 21 December 2023 . 'AI' named Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary . www.euronews.com.
4. Web site: Collins English Dictionary [14th edition]]. collins.co.uk. HarperCollins. 18 March 2024.
5. Web site: English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged: More than 730,000 words meanings and phrases . ISBN Search . 2024-05-07 . 2025-08-17.
6. Web site: Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged edition:13th edition . collins.co.uk . 2020-07-28 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180821191931/https://collins.co.uk/products/9780008284374 . 2018-08-21 . dead . 2025-08-17.
7. Liberman . Mark Y. . 1990 . The ACL data collection initiative . . 781–786 . Proceedings of the 5th Jerusalem Conference on Information Technology.
8. Liberman . Mark . 1989 . Text on Tap: the ACL/DCI . 173–178 . Speech and Natural Language: Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, October 15–18, 1989.
9. Web site: Solon . Olivia . 2012-01-03 . Collins launches free dictionary site . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20160304212818/http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-01/03/collins-dictionary-online . 2016-03-04 . 2025-08-20 . Wired UK.
10. News: Price. Emily. YOLO in the Dictionary? Collins Crowdsources Lexicon. 11 June 2019. Mashable. Ziff Davis. 17 July 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20190611143113/https://mashable.com/2012/07/17/collins-crowd-sourcing-dictionary/. 11 June 2019. New York City. live.
11. News: Reid. Susanna Victoria. Turnbull. William Robert Joylon. Brown. Alex. etal. Susanna Reid. Bill Turnbull. Blootered? New words in dictionary. 11 June 2019. BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation. 11 September 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20190611142354/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-19554595/blootered-online-dictionary-gets-new-words. 11 June 2019. MediaCityUK, Salford Quays. Video. dmy-all. live.
12. News: . Collins online dictionary adds mummy porn and blootered. 11 June 2019. BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation. 11 September 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20190611142835/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-19557542. 11 June 2019. Glasgow. dmy-all. live.
13. News: Moss. Stephen. Collins launches online dictionary to debate new words. 11 June 2019. The Guardian. 16 December 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20190611143414/https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/dec/16/books.pressandpublishing. 11 June 2019. London. live.
14. Web site: Discover the New Scrabble Words. 21 May 2015. www.collinsdictionary.com. 11 June 2019. HarperCollins. https://web.archive.org/web/20190611133910/https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/discover-the-new-scrabble-words,210,HCB.html. 11 June 2019. dmy-all. live.