Ice Blue Digital has released Wordnet 3.0 Search, a free online dictionary.

There is an obvious paradox to the concept of a dictionary - single words can have multiple meanings and dictionaries use words to define the definition of other words. For example, the humble word "word" has at least ten definitions:

1. a unit of language that native speakers can identify; "words are the blocks from which sentences are made"; "he hardly said ten words all morning"
2. a brief statement; "he didn't say a word about it"
3. new information about specific and timely events; "they awaited news of the outcome"
4. the divine word of God; the second person in the Trinity (incarnate in Jesus)
5. a promise; "he gave his word"
6. a secret word or phrase known only to a restricted group; "he forgot the password"
7. an exchange of views on some topic; "we had a good discussion"; "we had a word or two about it"
8. the sacred writings of the Christian religions; "he went to carry the Word to the heathen"
9. a verbal command for action; "when I give the word, charge!"
10. a word is a string of bits stored in computer memory; "large computers use words up to 64 bits long"

It is only through context that we can understand these definitions, a contextual awareness that has taken years and years for all of us to develop and that depends on everyone reaching more or less the same set of contextual word meanings.

From the perspective of a computer or a non-native speaker, this web of associations can seem arbitary and not immediately apparent. But today arrives a solution!

Wordnet 3.0, combined with the Princeton Wordnet Gloss Corpus has created an exact mapping between each word in the dictionary's definition with the exact semantic definition of the word used in that context.

Try it out and decide for yourself if this free, ad-free dictionary is better than the other dictionaries out there.