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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:The Joy of Lex
Notice:A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:THEBAY::SYSTEM
Created:Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1192
Total number of notes:42769

1162.0. "Dictionaries available on the WWW" by DRDAN::KALIKOW (DIGITAL=DEC; Reclaim the Name&Glory!) Wed Dec 27 1995 18:12

    I'm reading Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" and am having a
    delicious experience -- twice, now, in the first 74 pages, I've
    encountered words that I have to look up in the dictionary.  My new
    faithful cellulose dictionary didn't fail me on "velleity" but has
    caused me to pick up my web-browser for "par�miological."  Only problem
    is that Alta Vista hasn't pointed me at a useful online dictionary.
    I've found some, but they're either protos or are restricted to certain
    IP domains.  
    
    Strikes me that this is a perfect use for ::JOYOFLEX ...  sharing URLs
    where we can answer this sort of question...
    
    Happy New Year, all.
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name		DateLines
1162.1http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/websterTOHOPE::VORE_SRaise The StandardTue Jan 02 1996 14:215
but... 
	Webster Definition for "parmiological"

	No definition for 'parmiological'.
1162.2SMURF::BINDEREis qui nos doment vescimur.Wed Jan 03 1996 04:482
    OED Second Edition cellulose dictionary also lacks an entry for
    "parmiological."  Anyone got a Third Edition handy?
1162.3Webster's on the WebCSC32::K_GILFORDThe Call of the WorldWed Jan 03 1996 20:3822
    Re: .0
    
    It seems the OED folks and others insist on copyrighting their
    dictionairies (what, they want to make money?).  The only decent
    English dictionary that I've found on the WWW so far that is not
    access-restricted is the one below:
    
    Dictionary		URL
    ----------          ---
    Webster's           http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/webster     
    			http://nqcd.lanl.gov/WEBSTER
    
    
    The first URL is a little better because every word in the definition
    that is contained in the dictionary is hyper-linked.  There is a
    thesaurus hyper-link as well.
    
    Sorry no 'parmiological' there either.  In fact, the only word in
    Webster's that begins with 'parm-' is parmesan.  
    
    
    Kevin
1162.4PRSSOS::MAILLARDDenis MAILLARDThu Jan 04 1996 01:496
    Re .1, .2, .3: "parmiological" is not the word that Dan wanted to know
    about. The word is "par�miological". Do you have any problem with the
    8-bit characters? In that case, read it as : "paroemiological" with the
    first "o" and the "e" coalesced into one letter (and no, I don't know
    what it means).
    		Denis.
1162.5DRDAN::KALIKOWDIGITAL=DEC; Reclaim the Name&Glory!Thu Jan 04 1996 07:563
    Tnx Denis.  As I recall from context, "paroemiological" had to do with
    the study of subversiveness...
1162.6SMURF::BINDEREis qui nos doment vescimur.Thu Jan 04 1996 08:0912
    Re .4
    
    Denis, my terminal emulator shows the oe ligature, but the word in the
    basenote contains a division sign, not the oe ligature.  Of course,
    this could just be due to a confusion of which character set I'm using
    (ISO 8859-1).  In fact, I've just now logged into another session using
    the DEC Multinational Character Set, and bingo, I get the ligature.
    
    In amy case, I did a wild-card search on par*miology and par*miological
    in my electronic American Heritage Dictionary - no matches.  :-)
    
    -dick
1162.7AnswerKERNEL::MORRISWhich universe did you dial?Thu Jan 04 1996 08:538
    OK - Chambers 20th C wins again:  here goes.....
    
    paroemia, n. a proverb, adage.
    paroemiology, the study of proverbs
    
    Hope that helps
    
    Jon
1162.8:-)DRDAN::KALIKOWDIGITAL=DEC; Reclaim the Name&Glory!Thu Jan 04 1996 10:062
                                     Tnx Jon!