... presents the magnificent Century Dictionary, perhaps the most
beautiful authoritative dictionary of all time, in DjVu (tm) format.
.... The Century Dictionary Online is now the largest freely
available dictionary on the World Wide Web. Because DjVu images can be
zoomed to 999%, it is also in effect the only comprehensive "large
print" dictionary on the web. The entire text - 12 volumes, more
than 10,000 pages, more than 500,000 definitions, 22 million searchable
words, a biographical Cyclopedia, and a colorful world atlas - is now
available. With a user interface that includes headword browsing and
lookup as well as fast full text searches made possible by DjVu's OCR
capabilities, The Century Dictionary Online offers users a real
experience of déjà vu, a chance to reëxperience the legendary beauty and
renowned scholarship of The Century Dictionary in all its particulars and
yet in ways never possible before.
For example, you will find scholarly definitions and etymologies
for --
epagomenal --
iris
and other words that lesser dictionaries can't handle. OTOH bear in
mind that this dates from 1889, so if you look up words like
"laser" and "computer" you're gonna get funny
results.
A NUMBER of people have asked us why we have gone to all this trouble
to put a hundred-year-old dictionary on the World Wide Web. The answer
can be summed up in three words: it's free, it's big, and it's beautiful.
....