{{Short description|Printed and online dictionary of English, published by HarperCollins in Glasgow}} {{Italic title}} {{Cite_check|date=March 2023}} {{Use Oxford spelling|date=November 2017}} {{Use dmy dates|date=July 2017}} thumb|''Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged 13th edition''
The '''''Collins English Dictionary''''' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow<ref>{{Cite news |date=2014-10-22 |title=Why Scotland is the last word in dictionaries |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-29725014 |access-date=2025-10-25 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB}}</ref><ref name="HCUK History">{{cite web|title=History|url=https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/corporate/about-us/history/|website=www.harpercollins.co.uk|publisher=HarperCollins|access-date=11 June 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611134631/https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/corporate/about-us/history/|archive-date=11 June 2019|location=Glasgow|year=2015|url-status=live}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mouriquand |first=David |date=21 December 2023 |title='AI' named Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary |url=https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/11/01/ai-named-word-of-the-year-by-collins-dictionary |website=www.euronews.com}}</ref><ref name="Collins-English-Dictionary-14e-2023">{{cite web|url=https://collins.co.uk/products/9780008511340|title=Collins English Dictionary [14th edition]|website=collins.co.uk|publisher=HarperCollins|access-date=18 March 2024}}</ref>
==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.<ref name="Collins-English-Dictionary-14e-2023"/> A newer edition of the 14th edition was published on 7 May 2024.<ref>{{cite web | title=English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged: More than 730,000 words meanings and phrases | website=ISBN Search | date=2024-05-07 | url=https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/9780008511340 | access-date=2025-08-17}}</ref> * The previous edition was the 13th edition, which was published in November 2018.<ref>{{cite web | title=Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged edition:13th edition | website=collins.co.uk | date=2020-07-28 | url=https://collins.co.uk/products/9780008284374 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180821191931/https://collins.co.uk/products/9780008284374 | archive-date=2018-08-21 | url-status=dead | access-date=2025-08-17}}</ref> * 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.{{citation needed|date=February 2012|reason=See Talk}}
The computer database used for the 1979 edition was donated to the ACL Data Collection Initiative.<ref name="liberman1990">{{cite conference |last=Liberman |first=Mark Y. |year=1990 |title=The ACL data collection initiative |publisher= IEEE |pages=781–786 |book-title=Proceedings of the 5th Jerusalem Conference on Information Technology}}</ref><ref name="liberman1989">{{cite conference |last=Liberman |first=Mark |year=1989 |title=Text on Tap: the ACL/DCI |pages=173–178 |book-title=Speech and Natural Language: Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, October 15–18, 1989}}</ref>
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 ''Collins English Dictionary'' was published on the web on 31 December 2011 on the freely accessible CollinsDictionary.com, along with the translation dictionaries between English and French, German, Spanish and Italian.<ref name="wired">{{cite web |last=Solon |first=Olivia |date=2012-01-03 |title=Collins launches free dictionary site |url=http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-01/03/collins-dictionary-online |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304212818/http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-01/03/collins-dictionary-online |archive-date=2016-03-04 |website=Wired UK}}</ref> 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,<ref name="YOLO Mashable">{{cite news|last1=Price|first1=Emily|title=YOLO in the Dictionary? Collins Crowdsources Lexicon|url=https://mashable.com/2012/07/17/collins-crowd-sourcing-dictionary/|access-date=11 June 2019|work=Mashable|publisher=Ziff Davis|date=17 July 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611143113/https://mashable.com/2012/07/17/collins-crowd-sourcing-dictionary/|archive-date=11 June 2019|location=New York City|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="BBC 2012 video">{{cite news|last1=Reid|first1=Susanna Victoria|last2=Turnbull|first2=William Robert Joylon|last3=Brown|first3=Alex|display-authors=etal|author-link1=Susanna Reid|author-link2=Bill Turnbull|title=Blootered? New words in dictionary|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-19554595|access-date=11 June 2019|work=BBC News|publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation|date=11 September 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611142354/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-19554595/blootered-online-dictionary-gets-new-words|archive-date=11 June 2019|location=MediaCityUK, Salford Quays|format=Video|df=dmy-all|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="BBC 2012 article">{{cite news|author1=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|title=Collins online dictionary adds mummy porn and blootered|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-19557542|access-date=11 June 2019|work=BBC News|publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation|date=11 September 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611142835/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-19557542|archive-date=11 June 2019|location=Glasgow|df=dmy-all|url-status=live}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Guardian 2004">{{cite news|last1=Moss|first1=Stephen|title=Collins launches online dictionary to debate new words|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/dec/16/books.pressandpublishing|access-date=11 June 2019|work=The Guardian|date=16 December 2004|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611143414/https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/dec/16/books.pressandpublishing|archive-date=11 June 2019|location=London|url-status=live}}</ref>
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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/discover-the-new-scrabble-words,210,HCB.html|title=Discover the New Scrabble Words|date=21 May 2015|website=www.collinsdictionary.com|access-date=11 June 2019|publisher=HarperCollins|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611133910/https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/discover-the-new-scrabble-words,210,HCB.html|archive-date=11 June 2019|df=dmy-all|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Primary source inline|date=August 2025}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * [http://www.collinsdictionary.com CollinsDictionary.com] – ''Collins English Dictionary'', ''American English Dictionary'', Thesaurus
{{Dictionaries of English}}
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Category:Online English dictionaries Category:William Collins, Sons books Category:1979 non-fiction books