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Oxford Dictionaries Premium
- Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) is separate to 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) in 2014. The ODE is still part of the goody bag. ODO can be accessed only via an annual subscription fee.
Any word offered by a contestant which is uncapitalised and in bold in ODO will be accepted. Italicised words will not be accepted.
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 website; if it can be found there, then the word is accepted. Both websites operate a slightly different search logarithm.
The US English and US Dictionary sections are not used for adjudication. The UK Dictionary and US Dictionary sections were originally not separate in Lexico, but as of January 2020 this is no longer the case. This means one-word entries under the US sections which are otherwise specified as two separate words in UK sections (e.g. outearn ☓) are no longer 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 (e.g. LOTION gives a [COUNT NOUN] sense in Premium and not in Lexico) as well as some verbs ending with -ING "as noun".
Unspecified redirections from searching words that link to other entries in the dictionary are also not used for adjudication; when searches do redirect, only words specified on the page (and any sensible plurals and inflections) will be accepted. (e.g. gammier ☓ and raviolo ☓ are invalid despite redirecting to GAMMY and RAVIOLI respectively).
Words capitalised in ODO that are erroneously uncapitalised in Lexico (e.g. mohawk ☓) are invalid.
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.
Missing Plurals and Inflections
Not all nouns in ODO specify plurals, and not all verbs specify past/present tenses or past/present participles. In these cases, the aim is to accept logical plurals and inflections in common sense and assume these over nonsense words. Hence, for example, GENESES is assumed the plural of GENESIS over genesises ☓.
For -MAN words specifically: the accepted plural of any gender-related noun ending in suffixes -MAN and -WOMAN would be -MEN and -WOMEN respectively (e.g. ORRAMAN has no specified plurals but ORRAMEN is assumed over orramans ☓); if it is not gender-related according to the definition, it would be -MANS (e.g. CAYMANS is assumed over caymen ☓).
For verbs with a prefix in front: if past/present tenses and/or past/present participles are not specified, then it would be assumed to take the same specified inflections as the corresponding verb without the prefix (e.g. OUTLIE has no specified inflections but, since the specified tenses of LIE are LIES, LYING, LAY and LAIN, OUTLIES, OUTLYING, OUTLAY and OUTLAIN would be assumed valid. outshined ☓ is invalid because OUTSHONE is the specified past and past participle).
