Most Recommended English Dictionaries (with downloads)

A heartful thank you to all who contributed to human knowledge and its accessibility.

My most recommended Top 7 English to English dictionaries. All can be used in GoldenDict Desktop:

  1. Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th Edition, COED11, Lingvo: eng-eng_coed_an-vi_1_5.7z (7.4 MB)

  2. Oxford Dictionary of English, Online 3rd Edition, ODE3, MDict (could hide Chinese in CSS)

For everyday queries, the recent Oxford lineup since 1998 is at the top of the pyramid. The biggest argument for them are their sensible selection of senses and their practical grouping of subsenses. The COED has an edge over the ODE when it comes to conciseness while the ODE has more content.

  1. English Wiktionary, En-En only

The following are all regularly updated:
StarDict with or without etymology. No part of speech. Also has files for other languages.
StarDict with part of speech. No etymology. Also has files for other languages.
StarDict with part of speech. No etymology. Words only, no phrases. Also has files for other languages
Full English Wiktionary and Wikipedia in Aard2 format.

  1. American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 Edition, Webster’s 1828, MDict
  2. GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English, v.0.53, GCIDE, Dictd: GCIDE v.0.53.7z (14.1 MB)

Noah Webster’s original 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language is a masterpiece and my favorite dictionary before OED. It’s written by one man. It’s literary. It’s insightful. It’s excellent. It also can double as a bible dictionary. The second edition, with minor revisions from Webster, can be inquired online here. Webster’s 1913 is no longer by Noah Webster himself, but still useful in that it has much more entries. The main argument for older Webster’s is that they have better “sense” and are not watered down in some aspects. They also have only examples from actual literature. GCIDE is Webster’s 1913 with some additions. 0.53 is the most recent version at the time of writing.

  1. Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition, OED, MDict

The pearl of the English language. The star of English lexical scholarship. Great for etymology, historical examples, and rarer senses.

  1. Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline, 2023 ed: MDict

Another one man’s project. Detailed etymology.

Honorable Mentions:

English to Chinese:

  1. https://github.com/skywind3000/ECDICT/wiki/简明英汉字典增强版
  2. http://download.huzheng.org/babylon/chinese/stardict-yinghancidian-2.4.2.tar.bz2
  3. (外教社)学科词汇手册合集(包含77部词典)2.13更新
  4. 国家教育研究院学术名词 2023.2.6数据
  5. wikititlepair.7z (13.5 MB)
  6. ODE now

English to Japanese:

  1. http://dadako.narod.ru/GoldenDict/eng-jpn_Babylon_1_1-GD.zip

Screenshot:

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