The Collins Dictionary is online. For free. Immediately, I wanted to have a look at it and see whether what it offers is any better from what I usually use (Macmillandictionary.com). Just a quick check with suggest.
Collins Online provides information about the word’s frequency (not seen below), pronunciation, grammar category and and definitions of 3 senses with an example each. I’m not sure, however, what is meant by sug’gester (noun) being an alternative form of suggest (verb). It isn’t connected to the entry of sug’gester in Collins either (there’s no such entry in the dictionary) so I just wouldn’t know. This is followed by information on the origin of the word, its synonyms and a link to Thesaurus, translations in a number of languages but not my own (Slovene and Hungarian) and usage examples (which senses are illustrated is not clear). This is a mess.
If I compare this to Macmillan Dictionary’s entry, I must say I prefer the latter. First of all, I like the fact that I can view the shorter or longer version of the entry – depending on my needs. Next, they offer 4 senses with examples that illustrate each sense of the word separately with highlighted patterns of usage. The thesaurus entries are also adjusted to the individual senses of the word. Advice is also given to learners of English about the correct use of the word and alternative ways of conveying the same meaning. And it looks neat.
Macmillan Dictionary: suggest
The Collins dictionary, however, has something useful that Macmillan doesn’t. Right to the entry, you can see 3 boxes: browse nearby words, suggest photos from Flickr and word usage trends (default: last 10 years) for suggest. While the photos might be useful with some nouns, I don’t see a point in using them with verbs like suggest. Also, Flickr photos can cause a lot of confusion if they are not selected carefully (check the box for foot). However, since incorporating an image or video is no longer a problem, online dictionaries could easily make better use of multimedia with selected entries.
Macmillan allows you to check the verb forms with a click (Collins does not), but it does not give a list of related words. I think its advertising revenue would not suffer much if a box with related words would replace an advertisement. Also, the box with information on a word’s frequency in the past is a keeper. It helps students put a word’s frequency in perspective. Language changes. Imagine this information was available for each sense of a word or even for its collocates!
All in all, I remain a Macmillan Dictionary fan.
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