Oxford Dictionaries Premium

Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) is separate from Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) and Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) is the premium version of two source dictionaries (the other being the free version, Lexico) currently used for adjudication of words offered by the contestants in the letters games on Countdown in dictionary corner. It replaced the Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE), which is still part of the goody bag. ODO can be accessed only via an annual subscription fee.

The lexicographer searches each contestant's word under the 'British English' section of the ODO website first. If their word is invalid, it is then searched under the 'UK Dictionary' section of the Lexico websites; if it can be found there, then the word is accepted. Both websites operate a slightly different search logarithm.

The UK Dictionary and US Dictionary sections were originally not separate in Lexico, but as of 2020 this is no longer the case. This means one-word entries in US English and US Dictionary which are otherwise specified as two separate words in UK English (e.g. outearn ☓) are no longer allowed.

Words capitalised in ODO that are erroneously uncapitalised in Lexico (e.g. mohawk ☓) are not allowed.

If a word can be found by searching for it under the British English section of ODO Premium, and "Entry from US English dictionary" appears underneath the word's phonetic spelling, it will be allowed; an example of this is COQUI. These cannot be found under UK Dictionary in Lexico. Premium is therefore more voluminous than Lexico, and also more accurate as it explicitly labels some mass nouns as a count noun, and some verbs ending with -ING "as noun".

ODO and Lexico are updated with thousands of new words each year. In order to keep in sync with both websites and dictionary rules the Apterous website's dictionary is updated quarterly by including and excluding words which would or would not be considered allowable on Countdown.

Dan McColm, the first series champion to be crowned in the ODO era, came up with very modern words included in the dictionary such as WHATEV, and in his last game of his octochamp run spotted that the conundrum BOBHOPTOM became PHOTOBOMB, a word that trended highly in 2014. Elliott Mellor, Luke Johnson-Davies and Sam Cappleman-Lynes have also been noted for finding obscure ODO words that could otherwise not be found in ODE.

External Links

• ODO website [1]
• Lexico website [2]