Life’s Meaning and Synonym Await Online

Remember the old way of using reference works?

You would get a CD-ROM off the shelf, put it into the computer and then finally be able to look up whatever you needed.

Now, many basic reference works exist right online, so if you happen to be on the Web, they are only a click away. Most of these dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, foreign language and notable quotation sites come with limitations or caveats, but they can be wonderfully useful. Here’s a guide to some of the handiest:

Dictionaries: The most complete, English language dictionary online is unabridged, but don’t expect it to be of much use if you want to look up a word coined in recent decades. “Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 Edition” can be accessed from several sites, including that of its publisher, Merriam-Webster, at https://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm. You simply type in a word you want to look up, click on “search” and it gives you the definitions, if found.

The dictionary was first put on the Net by New Jersey resident Patrick Cassidy, who says the “one and only reason” the 1913 edition is used is that it’s in the public domain. Even though out of date, this easy-to-use, online work often serves the purpose and it’s free. A more up-to-date version of the great “Oxford English Dictionary” is soon to be online, but its users will have to pay an access fee.

Thesaurus: The best known of all English language thesauri, “Roget’s,” is available in a version updated as recently as 1991. You can find it on a University of Chicago-sponsored site at https://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms(UNDERSCORE)unrest/ROGET.html.

Rhyming Dictionary: Unless you’re a poet or songwriter, this clever site by computer science student Doug Beeferman of Pittsburgh is of limited use. But it sure is fascinating and fun to try. Go to https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dougb/index.html and click on “Rhyming dictionary.”

You enter a word, click “submit” and it searches a phonetic dictionary for matches. For example, for “compute” it found 77 matches.

Encyclopedia: The full, updated text of one of the most prominent reference works, the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” is online at https://www.eb.com. But after a seven-day, free trial period, it costs $12.50 a month.

Biographical Dictionary: Short bios of more than 18,000 notables are available at https://www.tiac.net/users/parallax. A design company, the Parallax Group, hopes to sell ads to support the site.

Foreign Language: There are an amazing number of foreign-to-English dictionaries online. You can find links to more than 100 of them, including those that offer word translations from Urdu, Indonesian and Tibetan, as well as the European Romance languages, on a site maintained by Robert Beard at Bucknell University. The dictionaries vary as to ease of use and extensiveness. You can find the list at https://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/diction2.html#sign.

Quotes: The fully searchable, online version of Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations” is dated 1901. “Project Bartleby” at Columbia University has added some contemporary references to it, but this site is of most use if you are looking for a pre-20th century quote. It’s at https://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett.

And if you are ever stuck for that exact Dan Quayle quote to fit an occasion, you can find many of his pearls of wisdom at https://www.xmission.com/~mwalker/DQ/quayle/qq/quayle.quotes.html.

For example, he once told those gathered at a political rally, “If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.”

Maybe we’re better off with the 1901 Bartletts.

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Cyburbia’s e-mail address is david.colker@latimes.com.