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From: Mick Mueck
Date: 12 Jan 2003
I recently purchased the English Heritage set about a month back and have only just started checking it out now. I do not understand why there needs to be 3 different English language lexicons (English 1M, EnglishGold 2.1M, and EnglishPro 5.5M). I can find very many of the same words in all three, and the result in each case can be quite different. E.g. If I look up the word 'blow' in the English lexicon, I get all the usual meanings although a little brief because it's only 1MB. In the EnglishGold lexicon (which is twice the size) the word 'blow' doesn't even include the meaning as a verb! In the EnglishPro lexicon you get many of the same meanings again only with descriptive example sentences.
I'm wondering what the point of buying such a bundle is. Do you just keep looking up the word in many different lexicons till you find the meaning you want? There must also be a lot of redundant storage to cater for all the duplicate words. All I wanted was a COMPLETE dictionary - look up a word, read the meaning, done. I mistakenly thought buying the English Heritage bundle meant I was getting a few ADDENDUM lexicons containing rarer or more specialized words and that all 3 English lexicons were linked and would be searched to find my word. I completely see the need for separate lexicons for a thesaurus and abbreviations etc, but for the basic language itself I don't understand (or like) this implementation.
Do you have just a 'big english lexicon' that I can swap for? I just want to keep things simple (just like the real paper dictionary that I have here on my bookshelf).