Dictionary API

The Oxford Dictionaries API is a single API that supports multiple language capabilities. This page describes how to use the API as a dictionary API to retrieve definitions, pronunciations, usage examples, and semantic relationships such as synonyms and antonyms.

Use the Dictionary API capability when you need human-readable dictionary content for words, including meaning, usage and pronunciation.

What can you do with the Dictionary API?

Use this capability to:

  • Retrieve definitions and word meaning
  • Validate that a word exists
  • Show real-world usage examples
  • Access IPA transcriptions and word audio
  • Identify part of speech and lexical categories
  • Retrieve synonyms and antonyms
  • Build dictionary, glossary, and reference features

Typical Use Cases

The Dictionary API capability is typically used for monolingual lookup for:

  • Dictionary applications
  • Language learning applications
  • Educational platforms and assessment tools
  • eBooks and audiobooks platforms
  • Word games
  • Chatbots and writing assistants
  • Glossary and reference features

How this maps to the API

The Dictionary API capability is implemented using a combination of endpoints, each with a clear role:

Primary retrieval

  • Words (recommended)

    Accepts both headwords and inflected forms and resolves inflections internally. Returns the same structured dictionary content including definitions, pronunciations, lexical categories, sense structure, domains, registers and more.

    Use Words for all new integrations and direct dictionary lookup.

  • Entries

    Retrieves dictionary content for known headwords (lemmas), including definitions, pronunciations, lexical categories and sense structure.

    Returns 404 error for inflected forms. For new integrations, use Words.

  • Sentences

    Retrieves real-world usage examples from a corpus.

  • Thesaurus

    Retrieves synonyms, antonyms, and related words.

  • Pronunciations (alpha)

    Retrieves and groups pronunciation data by lexical category. Designed for efficient, pronunciation-only retrieval.

    (Available via alpha programme.)

Discovery and normalisation

  • Search

    Discovers candidate headwords using headword matching, fuzzy matching, and lemmatisation.

    Use before Words when working with raw or uncertain input.

  • Search Thesaurus

    Discovers candidate headwords for thesaurus lookup using headword matching, fuzzy matching, and lemmatisation.

  • Lemmas

    Resolves valid inflected forms (e.g. swimming → swim) to canonical base forms deterministically.

    Supports grammatical and lexical filtering. Does not perform fuzzy matching.

Recommended dictionary lookup flow

Choose the flow that matches your input quality and product needs.

Flow A: Direct dictionary lookup (recommended)

Use this in most cases. Use Words to retrieve dictionary content for a headword or inflected form. Words resolves inflections internally and returns structured dictionary content including definitions, pronunciations, examples, and lexical metadata.

Example
Input: walks
Step 1: Words → definitions + pronunciation + usage examples

GET https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com/api/v2/words/en-gb?q=walksCopy

Flow B: Handling uncertain or misspelled input

Use this when input may be incomplete, misspelled, or ambiguous.

  1. Use Search to discover candidate words.
  2. Use Words to retrieve dictionary content for the selected word.
  3. Optionally use Sentences and Thesaurus for further usage examples and synonyms/antonyms.

Example
Input: authrships
Step 1: Use Search endpoint to return authorship

GET https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com/api/v2/search/en-gb?q=authrshipsCopy

Step 2: Call Words endpoint to retrieve definitions, pronunciations and usage examples

GET https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com/api/v2/words/en-gb?q=authorship&fields=definitions,pronunciations,examplesCopy

Note that the fields Query Parameter has been used above to only retrieve definitions, examples and pronunciations from the response, rather than the entire response.

Flow C: Deterministic normalisation (specialist use)

Use this when your input is already a valid word form but may be inflected, and you need strict linguistic correctness or want to constrain results.

  1. Use Lemmas to retrieve possible lemmas (headword) for an inflected form.
  2. Apply filters such as lexicalCategories and/or grammaticalFeatures if needed.
  3. Use Words (or Entries) to retrieve dictionary content for the selected lemma.

Example
Input: swimming
Step 1: Lemmas → returns swim

GET https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com/api/v2/lemmas/en-gb/swimmingCopy

Step 2: Words → definitions + pronunciation + usage examples

GET https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com/api/v2/words/en-gb?q=swimCopy

Which endpoint should I use?

If you need to… Use
Retrieve dictionary data for a word (headword or inflected form) Words (recommended)
Handle raw user input, typos or incomplete input Search → Words
Resolve a valid inflected form to a canonical root form (advanced) Lemmas
Retrieve dictionary data for a known headword only (headword-only lookup) Words (optional; use Entries)
Retrieve real-world usage examples only Sentences
Retrieve synonyms and antonyms only Thesaurus
Retrieve pronunciations only Pronunciations (alpha)

Languages supported by the Dictionary API capability

The Oxford Dictionaries API supports dictionary content for multiple languages. The most commonly used language for dictionary applications is English.

Popular Languages

  • British English (en-gb)
  • American English (en-us)
  • Spanish (es)
  • Chinese (zh)

See the full list of supported languages on the Languages page.

FAQs

What is the dictionary API?

The Dictionary API is a capability of the Oxford Dictionaries API that provides access to dictionary-style content such as: definitions, example sentences, synonyms and pronunciations.

Which endpoint(s) should I use for dictionary data?

For new integrations, use the Words endpoint. Words retrieves dictionary content for both headwords and inflected forms.

Use Search before Words when working with raw user input (including typos or uncertain spelling).

Use Lemmas to resolve valid inflected words forms to their associated headword.

Use Entries only if you specifically require headword-only lookup behaviour or are maintaining an existing implementation.

Use Thesaurus to retrieve additional synonyms and antonyms for known headwords.

Is the dictionary API available in all languages?

Availability varies by language. Please refer to the Languages and API reference pages for more information.

What is the difference between the Entries and Words endpoints?

Words and Entries return the same dictionary payload.

The difference is that Words accepts inflected forms (e.g. walks), while Entries only accepts headwords (e.g. walk).

Words does not perform full fuzzy matching or typo correction. If your input may be misspelled or incomplete, use Search to discover the correct word.

What does strictMatch mean?

strictMatch is a Query Parameter that controls whether diacritics must match exactly.

It is supported on the Entries, Thesaurus, and Sentences endpoints.

  • When strictMatch=false, near homographs are also selected (e.g. rose matches both rose and rosé).
  • When strictMatch=true, only exact diacritic matches are returned.

This parameter does not enable fuzzy matching or typo correction. Use the Search endpoint if you need fuzzy matching or suggestions.

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