About the Oxford Dictionaries API

Harnessing the power of language

If you’re looking to enhance your app or website with dictionary data, don’t compromise on quality. The Oxford Dictionaries API offers easy and intuitive access to Oxford’s dictionary content, which is trusted around the world.

Behind-the-scenes access to world-renowned dictionary content

Here at Oxford Dictionaries, home of the OED, we love words. That’s why we have experienced lexicographers tracking the living language, delving deep into our corpora and monitoring a wide range of media in order to understand how words are being used and how language is evolving. This research is used by our editors to write and edit dictionary entries and translations, meaning we’re able to offer up-to-date, accurate, and reliable lexical content in multiple languages.

Access

You can quickly and easily incorporate our lexical data in your apps via one single API.

The Oxford Dictionaries API gives you access to:

• flexible endpoints including headwords, parts of speech, definitions, translations, audio, example sentences, labels, and more…
• data expertly pre-processed by our in-house engineers to ensure accuracy and consistency of format
• continually updated content, so you have immediate access to the latest words and linguistic resources, drawn from our world-renowned language research

We’ve taken a LEAP forward in data management

The Oxford Dictionaries API is the gateway to our innovative new lexical engine and platform (LEAP) where our dictionary data is optimized and semantically linked. All translations are linked at sense level, so if you’re looking for the Spanish equivalent of ‘bow’, we’ll make sure you get the sense you need (whether that be ‘a decorative tied ribbon’,’a way of greeting someone with respect’, or ’the front end of a ship’). This semantic linking also allows you to easily cross reference lexical information, opening up endless possibilities of how you can use the data, from simple word lookups and vocabulary quizzes to natural language processing and artificial intelligence.

Watch the below video to find out more…

Continuous development

We are continually developing the Oxford Dictionaries API and using developer feedback to drive new features and data releases. If there is a specific piece of functionality or language you are interested in, please contact us and let us know.

Should the API not currently suit your needs, we also offer customization and offline licensing of datasets in over 35 languages from Afrikaans to Vietnamese, just contact us or visit our Licensing page for more information.

Great quality language data combined with the OUP brand, which is globally respected and recognized, contributed to our software’s engagement levels and usage growth across a variety of new and existing markets.

Martin McKay, Chief Technology Officer, Texthelp