Links

Here is a selection of websites which have enriched my life, may they enrich yours too! They are an eclectic assortment, but all with the common thread of…yes, words and language. There are a few other simply useful links too.

Dictionaries and Definitions

Dictionary and Thesaurus: http://dictionary.reference.com/

A very handy online dictionary which also offers a thesaurus and encyclopedia.

Unusual Words: http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm

Michael Quinion’s site is full of fascinating facts about unusual words and turns of phrase such as ‘rannygazoo’ and ‘muggins’. He has a mailing list and several books.

Polysyllabic Words: http://www.wordinfo.info/

A great site to find English words derived from Greek and Latin sources. Full of words it’s a joy to know and never use (unless there’s a pub quiz coming up).

Etymology: http://www.etymonline.com/

Here you can look up the long histories of all manner of marvellous words in less time than it takes to say them.

Blogs

Language Blogs: http://www.lexiophiles.com/

If you’re looking for even more language-related chat, this site lists some of the best language blogs.

Phonetics Blog: http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/

For sound-lovers (or phonophilics* if you like) this fascinating website speaks for itself. Thanks to the friend who led me to it! *N/B A phonophile is actually down as someone who collects phonograph records, according to about.com that is…

Language Learning

Verb Conjugation: http://www.verbix.com/

Verb conjugators and language maps galore (from Irish ‘go leor’ , meaning ‘enough’) can be found here, all in the worthy cause of linguistic diversity.

Literature

The Modern Word: http://www.themodernword.com/site_info.html

A large network of literary sites dedicated to exploring twentieth century writers who have pushed the envelope of traditional narrative and structure.

Translation

EU Multilingual Dictionary: http://iate.europa.eu/iatediff

This is an excellent online multilingual dictionary translating between a large number of different languages and showing word usage in different terminological fields.

Another Multilingual Dictionary: http://www.logos.it/

This is another very good multilingual dictionary providing translations into a huge number of languages.

Multilingual Terminological Dictionary: http://www.lexicool.com/

A very useful index/directory to online translation dictionaries.

German Multilingual Dictionary: http://dict.leo.org/

This is a very handy online dictionary for translating from German into English, French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese. The forums are particularly useful for finding out about odd terms which seem untranslatable.

Word Art

Word Clouds: http://www.wordle.net

On this site you can input text to create beautiful word clouds based on word frequency.