13 June 2024

New Simplified Chinese Monolingual endpoint added to the ODAPI – June 2024 content update:

Chinese definitions are landing on the Oxford Dictionaries API thanks to the addition of the Simplified Chinese Monolingual dictionary, which will be accessible from 13^th June 2024. This will now be available alongside the already-existing Chinese<>English translations, making our Chinese offering on the API more complete.

How can Chinese definitions be accessed?

The Simplified Chinese dictionary can now be accessed via the Entries or Words endpoint, using the language code "zh". You can also use this in the Search endpoint to get possible Chinese headword matches for a given word.

What features will this data include?

The Simplified Chinese dictionary data will include key features that are typically found in our monolingual endpoints, including definitions, examples, and transliterations. Other features include lexical category, derivatives, senses and their IDs, compounds, phrases, and editorial notes.

Who can use it and how?

Existing and non-existing users who would like to the trial the Simplified Chinese dictionary on the ODAPI can contact us to get exclusive trial access. If you are interested in licensing the Simplified Chinese dictionary via the Oxford Dictionaries API, please get in touch with us for more information.

For more information on our available languages, please visit our supported languages page.

3 June 2024

English language datasets – June 2024 content update:

The content of the English datasets is being updated on the ODAPI. These updates take effect automatically from 3^rd June 2024.

English dictionary datasets (UK and US)

Additions:

Around 230 new headwords, phrases, and senses were added to the English dictionary datasets. Over 3,000 senses have been added to the American English dictionary. The following are a few examples:

• New words include active shooter, dairy-free, emerging market, First People, global majority, home invasion, mpox, school shooting, side quest, twindemic, ultra-processed, wrongthink.
• New words in science, medicine, technology, and the environment include artificial general intelligence, cosmic web, cryosphere, generative AI, heat dome, interoception, megadrought, prompt engineering, training data.
• New words from our World English program focused on Japanese terms and words used in Hispanic contexts include buenos dias, cafecito, charrería, donburi, isekai, kintsugi, kirigami, sugar skull.

Revisions:

At least 4,000 entries were editorially revised, updated, or corrected for this release. User feedback was implemented, and corrections made where appropriate.

• Creation of full entries for 100 previously undefined derivatives include aerobatic, auto-eroticism, crookedness, double-crosser, dualist, extemporization, monetarist, nepotistic, relativist, structuralist, sublimation, zesty.

Sensitivity in the dictionary data:

We conducted major projects to ensure that our content remained up to date and appropriate for all users. These include:

• The Language of Disability project, which involved the revision of over 80 entries and adding terms including D/deaf, disablism, dysmorphism, hearing impairment, legally blind, vision-impaired.
• The Women’s Health project, which involved the revision of over 60 entries, dealing with topics such as menstruation, menopause, and childbirth.

There have been no changes in sensitivity label values. Sensitivity label values remain: derogatory / offensive / vulgar slang.

Pronunciations & audio:

Pronunciations in the form of IPA transcriptions and audio have been created for all new entries added in this release. Pronunciation additions and improvements have also been made to over 6,000 existing entries.

Data improvements in the Entries/Words endpoint:

• Values for lexicalCategory and grammaticalFeatures have been improved for more consistency and granularity. Prefixes and suffixes such as “pre-” and “- ment” now have lexicalCategory “affix” and grammaticalFeatures “prefix” and “suffix” respectively; and prepositions such as “behind” have lexicalCategory “adposition” and grammaticalFeatures “preposition”.

Thesaurus

At least 750 entries have been edited or revised in the UK and US English thesaurus. The following are some examples:

• New synonyms have been added to more than 150 entries, including fugazi at counterfeit, catfish at cheat, impairment at drunkenness, like taking candy from a baby at easy, beakish at hooked, and feel someone's pain at sympathize.

Sensitivity in the thesaurus data:

• Sensitive content (particularly that relating to the language of disability) was reviewed and updates made, and user feedback was implemented.
• There have been no changes in sensitivity label values. Sensitivity label values remain: derogatory / offensive / vulgar slang.

Sentences

The sentence data has been updated with new examples for all new senses and headwords added to our English dictionaries this year (from above), as well as new examples for many other words and senses that had previously lacked them – over 4000 new examples in total. The following are some examples:

• New examples added for words including ultra-processed, twindemic, transness, prompt engineering, roadman.
• New examples added for phrases including good shout, don’t at me, break bad, not on my watch.
• New examples added for new word senses including for intercept, facilitate, cap.

Sensitivity in sentences data:

• The data has been sensitivity reviewed, with a focus on political content and current affairs.
• Enhanced sensitivity checking has also been put in place to ensure vulgar and offensive sentences are not present.

Data improvements in the Sentences endpoint:

• Extensive improvements have been performed on English sentence data to remove duplicates and ensure that examples are representative of their related word senses.

If you have any queries or feedback about the recent updates, please feel free to contact us.

27 November 2023

English and Spanish language datasets – content update 2023:

The content of the English and Spanish datasets are being updated on the ODAPI. These updates take effect automatically from 29^th November 2023.

English dictionary datasets

Additions:

At least 330 new headwords, phrases, and senses were added to English dictionary datasets. The following are a few examples:

• New words include Black Vernacular English, cold open, direction of travel, folk horror, gajillion, hidden homeless, wokeism.
• New words related to technology include alt text, cryptoeconomy, digital age, and facial recognition
• New words in science, medicine, technology and the environment include alcohol use disorder, amoebocyte, forever chemical, gigafactory, heat island.
• New phrases include asking for a friend, blow a hoolie, break bad, down with the kids, get the memo, no cap, and play in Peoria

IPA transcriptions and audio pronunciations were also created for new entries. We have created approximately 1,300 new pronunciation transcriptions, and approximately 2,600 new pronunciation audio files. We have also added illustrative examples to at least 840 entries.

Revisions

At least 2,400 entries were editorially revised, updated, or corrected for this release. User feedback was implemented and corrections made where appropriate.

• Major entries revised include AI, artificial intelligence, consent, elementary particle, immersive, interactive, popcorn.
• Full entries were created for at least 200 previously undefined derivatives, including altruist, ambassadorial, bullfighter, circularity, dandyish, exemplification, greenwashing.
• We revised and standardized our policy on derogatory terms and added derogatory labels to at least 340 words and meanings.
• At least 500 etymologies were updated in line with research carried out for the historical OED project, in most cases to take account of earlier first uses identified by the researchers.

Oxford Thesaurus of English and Sentence Dictionary

Reviews and updating of sensitive content and updates made on these two datasets. User feedback has been assessed and implemented as required.

Spanish dictionary datasets

Additions:

Over 600 new entries, 77 new phrases, and 5 new senses have been added to the Spanish dictionary. The update also includes over 100 new feminine inflections. The following are a few examples:

• New entries/phrases include candidatizar (to put [sb] forward as a candidate), ciclovía (bike lane), cisgénero (cisgender), copa menstrual (menstrual cup), emergencia climática (climate emergency), lenguaje inclusivo (inclusive language), urgenciólogo (ER doctor).

Changes in Sensitivity labels:

The list of sensitivity labels has been reduced. The labels are now marginal, despectivo (derogatory), and malsonante (vulgar/offensive). Previously, some of these labels were combined into one.

Spanish Bilingual dataset:

Over 150 new or revised entries across English-Spanish and Spanish-English are included with the new update. The following are a few examples:

• New words in English-Spanish include gender transition (transición de género), smart meter (contador inteligente), clinical depression (depresión clínica), cishet (cisheterosexual).
• New words in Spanish-English include tecnología ponible (wearable technology), okupa (squatter), lenguaje inclusivo (inclusive language), feminicidio (femicide).

27 November 2023

Additional maintenance updates to OD API:

As a result of further maintenance, Oxford Dictionaries API has made some minor updates in effort to continue improving the consistency in the API results. These changes only affect English and Spanish data, and they do not affect the structure or any core features. The updates will be effective on the ODAPI from 29th November 2023.

Updates include:

• Etymologies now given at every relevant entry: In English datasets, etymologies are now given in every relevant entry, rather than just the first entry. For example, for “axe” in en-gb, the etymology is now given in both the noun entry and the verb entry. Previously, it was only given in the verb entry.
• Change in lexicalCategory label “idiomatic”: The lexicalCategory “idiomatic” has been replaced with “phrase”, e.g. en-gb “take someone aback”.
• Change in lexicalCategory label “residual”: The lexicalCategory “residual” with grammaticalFeature “abbreviation” has been replaced with lexicalCategory “abbreviation”, e.g. “amp” in en-gb. The lexicalCategory “residual” with grammaticalFeature “symbol” has been replaced with lexicalCategory “symbol”, e.g. “a” in en-gb.
• Standardization of punctuation in definitions: In English and Spanish datasets, the punctuation in definitions has been standardized so that no definitions end in full stops. Previously, this was inconsistent.
• Grouping of synonyms: In the English datasets, some synonyms that were previously treated separately, have now been grouped together. For exmaple, in “apex”, there is a synonym “highest point/part” – this was previously two synonyms “highest point” and “highest part”.
• Removal of some crossReferences types: In English and Spanish datasets, crossReferences no longer have the types “abbreviationOf” and “anotherTermFor”. Instead, they now have the type “seeAlso”. This information about abbreviations/alternative terms is already indicated in the crossReferenceMarker, e.g. “short for ampere” in en-gb entry for “amp”; “British term for soccer” in en-us entry for “football”.
• Changes in collocation attributes: In English-Spanish and Spanish-English, the type on collocations for non-verb parts of speech “object” has been changed to “other”. For example, in the English-Spanish entry “awkward”, the collocations “movement” and “person” now have the type “other” rather than “object”.
• Changes in some IDs: Some lexical IDs have changed. For examples, in the English thesaurus entry “arm”, the ID for archaic subsense was “t_en_gb0000798.001” and is now “t_en_gb0000798.s01”. In the Spanish dictionary entry “ambigú”, the ID for synonym “bufé” was “ida61995bd-179c-4299-b0d0-ed58f4f31ba4” and is now “m_es0002951.007”. This is due to changes in our data pipeline. We recommend that you refresh your cache, to ensure that you are using the latest IDs.
• Changes in grammaticalNote in Spanish monolingual: In the Spanish monolingual, many instances of grammaticalNote have been changed to editorialNote. For example, in the Spanish dictionary entry “ambigú”, the note “El plural es ambigúes, culto, o ambigús, popular.” now has type “editorialNote” whereas previously it was “grammaticalNote”.

If you have any queries or feedback about the recent updates, please feel free to contact us.

20 September 2023

Maintenance Updates to OD API

Oxford Dictionaries API has recently undergone minor improvements to maintain consistency in API results. These changes do not affect the structure or any core features of the data and will be effective from 21st September 2023.

Updates include :

• Change in labelling: The "text" element of labels such as region, register, domain and semantic class labels have previously been presented with underscores, e.g. "North_American", "Egyptian_Mythology". These have now been removed, which means that these labels do not have underscores anymore e.g. "North American", "Egyptian Mythology". This change affects all endpoints that include these labels. The "id" element has not been affected by this change and remains the same.
• Adjustments to Search endpoint results: The responses given from the Search endpoint may contain more values than what was given previously, making the results more enriched and consistent. In some cases, the results may be presented in a slightly different order to previous results.
• Addition to domain class values: The Domains endpoint, which returns a list of all available domain classes for a given language, has been updated. Domain class values listed now have some additional items that were previously not present. This does not affect the domain class labels given for words in the Entries and Words endpoint.

We would love to hear from you if you have any queries or feedback about the recent updates.

02 June 2021

English and Spanish language datasets – content update

English dictionary datasets

Around 800 definitions were added to the Oxford Dictionary of English and approximately 860 entries to the New Oxford American Dictionary, including more than 400 new headwords, phrases, and senses.

In this update we covered new terms arising from the coronavirus pandemic, science, medicine, and technology. Moreover, we continued adding new English from around the world, in particular:

• African American English: cuffing season, dookie braids, keep it 100, on the daily, usher board
• The Caribbean: bellywash, dutty, kaiso, mannish water, nice up
• South Asian and Indian English: kirana, lathicharge, shoe bite, short eats
• Canadian: bunkie, bush party, gotch, lob ball.

New phrases include fall off a cliff, keep on keeping on, knock something out of the park, let the genie out of the bottle, take a knee, live one's best life, put someone on blast, read the room, spit out one’s dummy, and the clock is ticking.

Among the senses added to existing entries are:

• jab, ‘inject (someone) with a vaccine; vaccinate’
• pivot, ‘(especially in a business context) completely change the way in which one does something’
• remote, ‘conducted or working away from a usual workplace or location, making use of communications technology’

More than 5,000 entries were editorially revised, updated, or corrected

• Major entries revised include Aryan, genocide, language, quarantine, sexuality, left wing, and right wing.
• More than 1,000 etymologies were updated
• The Mental Health and Mental Difference project researched mental and neurodevelopmental conditions and learning disability. More than 220 entries were revised.
• 5,000 illustrative examples, in particular those relating to political vocabulary, were reviewed and 1,000 replaced.

Oxford Thesaurus of English

More than 400 entries were revised or updated with new synonyms. Sensitive content was reviewed and updates made, and user feedback was implemented.

English Sentence Dictionary

We conducted a sensitivity check on the Sentence Dictionary, focusing on mental health, racial terms, protest, viruses, and epidemics. User feedback was implemented and corrections made.

Audio soundfiles

Audio pronunciations were created for new entries.

Spanish Monolingual

In addition to English datasets, we also worked on reviewing our Spanish monolingual dataset. We added around 100 completely new entries, 50 new senses or expressions, and 50 modified entries.

Spanish-English Bilingual

Approximately 200 new or updated entries across English-Spanish and Spanish-English. The update had a particular focus on coronavirus-related terms.

Stay tuned

Follow us on Linkedin and if you have any questions or feedback contact us!

30 July 2020

New languages and endpoints.

Release v2.5

Datasets

Home to some of the most authoritative and reliable language data on the market, Oxford Dictionaries API now gives you access to even more languages. In this release, we’re excited to announce the inclusion of some new datasets:

• French monolingual
• English – Hausa (bilingual, bidirectional)
• English – Hindi (bilingual, bidirectional)
• English – Farsi (bilingual, monodirectional)
• English – Georgian (bilingual, monodirectional)

You can find a full list of the available datasets on the Supported languages page.

New Features

• We have a new endpoint, Search Thesaurus. This endpoint replicates the functionality already available in the API for our monolingual and bilingual datasets, and extends it to our thesauri. It allows users to query possible headword matches within the Thesaurus, e.g. if you search "tall", it will give you the entries that contain "tall" in the headword.
• Bug fixes and performance improvements.

You can find details of all endpoints on the Swagger Documentation page.

Stay tuned

We’ll keep adding more datasets and features in the future, so follow us on Linkedin and if you have any questions or feedback contact us!

28 May 2020

Sentence Dictionary 2020, and various improvements.

Release v2.4

Thank you for choosing the Oxford Dictionaries API, the self-service toolkit for our world-renowned lexical data. This version includes:

• An update on the English Sentence Dictionary, available via the Sentences endpoint: as part of the sensitivity review hundreds of sentences were edited, deleted, or replaced. Sets of sentences were added to 250 senses that previously lacked them.
• Multiple bug-fixes and performance improvements in the Search endpoint.
• We moved pronunciations from lexicalEntry to entry level.
• As announced in the v2.3.1 release notes, LexiStats is completely removed from the API.

Stay tuned

We’ll keep adding more datasets and features in the future, so follow us on Linkedin and if you have any questions or feedback contact us!

06 May 2020

Annual update to English and Spanish lexical resources.

Release v2.3.1

At Oxford Languages we’re working hard to deliver the most updated and consistent sets of lexical data to our community of developers. v2.3.1 of the Oxford Dictionaries API brings the latest English and Spanish resources we have delivered, to reflect how people use languages in 2020.

New words, new senses, new definitions.

We have added 1,232 definitions to Oxford Dictionary of English (/en-gb/) and 1,324 to New Oxford American Dictionary (/en-us/), including 425 completely new headwords, phrases, and senses:

• New words include bliss point, boop, climate emergency, cutie pie, dark arts, deepfake, deplatform, digital nomad, love-bomb, misogynoir, net zero, non-job, overtourism, Padawan, plant-based, stablecoin, vulture capitalism, zoomies.
• More than thirty terms relating to the coronavirus outbreak were added, such as contact tracing, corona, Covid-19, elbow bump, flatten the curve, R0, self-isolate, shelter in place, social distancing.
• New phrases include days of wine and roses, go rogue, grow a pair, may the Force be with you, poison the well, sunlit uplands.
• New senses of existing words include: gammon (a middle-aged or older white man with conservative, traditionalist views, stereotypically characterized as having a red or flushed complexion); juice (a liquid containing nicotine and flavouring that is used in vaping devices); learning (a thing learned by experience; a lesson); ping-pong (a series of rapid exchanges between two parties or groups); Rover (a generic name for a pet dog); snack (a sexually attractive person).
• New science, technology, and medical words include gas and air, geosmin, helicase, hyponatraemia, linea alba, Nipah virus, solutions architect, strange matter, virtual machine.
• Dozens of new words from global varieties of English, including 40 terms from a special project on Philippines English and Filipino culture, for example carnap, comfort room, dirty ice cream, kare-kare, kikay, lechon, pan de sal, sara-sari store, yaya. Other World English terms include chop-chop, eat money, mama put (Nigerian), mamak, talk cock (SE Asian), add oil, dai pai dong, sandwich class (Hong Kong); wet market (China and SE Asia); char kway teow, chilli crab (Malaysia and Singapore); hensopper (South African).

We added 400 new entries across the English-Spanish and Spanish-English texts. On the English-Spanish side additions include words such as climate emergency, e-liquid, escape room, fake news, flight shame, plant-based, school strike, and unconscious bias.

On the Spanish-English side new words include: altavoz inteligente (smart speaker); cigarrillo eléctrico (e-cigarette); emergencia climática (climate emergency); leche de almendras (almond milk); masculinidad tóxica (toxic masculinity); poliamoroso (polyamorous); salud mental (mental health).

Revisions

More than 3,700 entries were editorially revised, updated, or corrected:

• High-profile words revised include working class, middle class, upper class and related words; gypsy and related words; coronavirus; eugenics; car; surrogate mother; human trafficking; impeach.
• Gender-neutral meanings were added to they, them, their, etc.
• Science terms revised include entries for quark and related words; Down’s syndrome and other syndromes

Feature updates:

• We are deprecating LexiStats. The endpoint /stats/ will be available only until the next release of the Oxford Dictionaries API (likely end of May).
• Pronunciation audio files are now served over TLS from https://audio.oxforddictionaries.com

Stay tuned

We’ll keep adding more datasets and features in the future, so follow us on Linkedin and if you have any questions or feedback contact us!

27 February 2020

Arabic, Russian, Marathi, and the new Inflections endpoint.

Release v2.3

The Oxford Dictionaries API is the self-service toolkit for our world-renowned dictionary data. Built to equip and empower developers with Oxford’s diverse and customizable datasets, the Oxford Dictionaries API provides reliable, up-to-date monolingual and bilingual data in an accessible, scalable environment.
Version 2.3 of the Oxford Dictionaries API introduces a number of significant additions to our language collection and feature capabilities.

Introducing the Inflections endpoint.

A much requested feature, the Inflections endpoint (often referred to as reverse lemmas), provides versatility and practicality to your projects.

From today, you’ll be able to retrieve a list of all the valid inflections starting from a dictionary headword. In a nutshell, if you give the API a headword (i.e. be in English), you’ll get am, are, is, been, being, was, were, be.

Head over to our documentation now, and check out the URL structure.

We’d love to know how you’re using the inflections endpoint, so please do get in touch.

New datasets: all about bilingual dictionaries.

Alongside the Inflections endpoint we’re continuing to add new languages to the API. In this release, we’re excited to announce the following bilingual dictionaries are now accessible via API:

• The Oxford Russian Dictionary, the oldest of our bilingual dictionaries, is a bidirectional dictionary between English and Russian. Updated every year since 1972 with new words and senses, it can be relied upon for high quality Russian bilingual data. It contains approximately 40000 headwords from English, and 50000 from Russian. Endpoints: Translations, Search Translations.
• The Oxford Arabic Dictionary, a bidirectional English-Arabic dictionary containing approximately 54000 words (27000 each side). Endpoints: Translations, Search Translations.
• English-Marathi bilingual, another bidirectional dictionary, with approximately 15000 words per side. Endpoints: Translations, Search Translations.

Translations endpoint upgrade.

The Translations endpoint has a much more robust output now, with inflections, cross-references at entry level, synonyms at entry level, and derivatives at parent level.

Stay tuned

We’ll keep adding more datasets and features in the future, so follow us on Linkedin and if you have any questions or feedback contact us!

17 October 2019

Introducing the Words endpoint

Release v2.2

You asked we listened. Introducing the Words endpoint, a new feature that enables you to retrieve definitions, pronunciations, word origins, and grammatical data across headwords and inflected words with just one call to the API.

Take, for example, swims. Previously to find the definition of swims, you’d need to first use the Lemmas endpoint to link to the headword, swim. Release v2.2 removes the middle step and streamlines the process to reach the definition of swims.

The Words endpoint is available for English, Spanish, Swahili, Latvian, Romanian, Gujarati, Hindi, and Tamil.

Dive into the documentation to find out more.

New Datasets

In this release, we’re excited to announce the inclusion of:

• English-Italian bilingual.
• English-Igbo.
• English-Yoruba.

New and improved

• Tone groups: a new data feature providing one or more encodings of a distinct tonal variation for a lexical item or its translation.
• Thesaurus endpoint: now supports grammatical features.
• Search endpoint: the total number of results matching a query has been fixed to provide a more accurate number, and large queries now produce more reliable results.
• Search results are now being capped at 10,000.
• Bug fixes and general performance improvements.

Stay tuned

We’ll keep adding more datasets and features in the future, so follow us on Linkedin and if you have any questions or feedback contact us!

23 July 2019

Chinese bilingual, Romanian monolingual, schema changes and more

Release v2.1

Datasets

Oxford Dictionaries is home to some of the most authoritative and reliable dictionaries on the market, and we’re continuing to add those to the API. In this release, we’re excited to announce the inclusion of some new datasets:

• Chinese bilingual.
• Romanian monolingual.
• Swahili, Setswana, Northern Sotho, Latvian, isiZulu, Romanian, and Tamil have now the Lemmas endpoint available.

New Features

• Filters parameters and Fields parameter available for translations endpoint.
• Constructions at sense level.
• Etymologies at sense level.
• Registers at pronunciation level.
• Word property in schema is deprecated.
• Other bug fixes and general performance improvements.
• HTTP URL’s have been deprecated, from now on only HTTPS is accepted.

Stay tuned

We’ll keep adding more datasets and features in the future, so follow us on Linkedin and if you have any questions or feedback contact us!

16 April 2019

Oxford Dictionaries API v2.0

04 April 2018

More words, more features, better security

13 December 2017

Lexistats – lexical data from our renowned monitor corpus

04 August 2017

Tamil and Gujarati added to the API

27 July 2017

New branding resources

27 June 2017

More calls per minute and more flexible allowances

06 June 2017

German and Portuguese added to the API

2 December 2016

Explore the latest additions to Oxford Dictionaries API

13 October 2016

Explore new language datasets and the Sentence Dictionary endpoint

September 20, 2016

Introducing Search and Thesaurus endpoints

September 19, 2016

We would love to hear your feedback

September 14, 2016

Have you logged in recently?

September 6, 2016

New datasets and endpoints added

August 23, 2016

Updating your API gateway url

July 21, 2016

Explore our data with 5 new ‘Utility’ endpoints

June 20, 2016

Welcome to the Oxford Dictionaries API