Speaker
Description
The use of LLMs in lexicography is a hot topic and indeed the focus of eLex 2025. In the past couple of years, several papers have emerged comparing existing dictionary entries with zero-shot chatbot queries (e.g. Nichols 2023) or with dictionary-like content obtained through the dynamic interaction between experts and chatbots (e.g. Lew 2023, Jakubíček & Rundell 2023). However, studies so far have not appeared to have contrasted well-established dictionaries compiled and edited by lexicographers with new types of dictionaries conceived with AI support.
This paper contrasts a new English dictionary created with the assistance of AI that has been designed for on-screen reading with two prestigious electronic dictionaries that have evolved from print editions. The definitions of 39 lexical items from a text on digital well-being published online in The Conversation (Shaleha 2024) were compared in: (a) The Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE), accessed directly from the reading screen by right-clicking on the target item when using an Apple device; (b) the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MW), accessed via a separate tab from the on-screen reading material; and (c) the new Reverso dictionary, embedded in the reading material through a browser extension.
To focus on vocabulary that readers of English as an additional language might genuinely want to look up, the lexical items included in the analysis were those marked as “off list” in a vocabulary profiling tool (Cobb, n.d.) and in Oxford 3000.
The target items consisted of 13 adjectives, 17 nouns (3 plural) 8 verbs (of which 4 were inflected) and 1 adverbial expression. Part of speech was disambiguated contextually where needed (e.g. prolonged was classified as an adjective, not a verb).
To assess the ease of consulting definitions for these items while reading on screen, the three dictionaries were compared according to the following parameters:
- Coverage (was the target sense provided?)
- Findability (was the target sense easy to spot?)
- Readability (how long were the definitions and what vocabulary did they use?)
- Look-up experience (how straightforward was it to access the dictionary while reading?)
The main differences observed were with regard to the last two of the above. Although Reverso is not immune to known problems of AI in lexicography (Michta & Frankenberg-Garcia, 2025), it outperformed ODE and MW in terms of readability and look-up experience, offering readers short, easy-to-understand definitions that users can consult with minimal disruption while reading electronic texts.
