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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) are the source website dictionaries currently used for adjudication of words offered by the contestants in the letters games on Countdown in Dictionary Corner. Supplied by the Oxford University Press, it comes in two versions: the 'Premium' version, Oxford Dictionaries Premium; and its 'free' version, branded as Lexico since June 2019. The premium version can only be accessed via an annual subscription fee or a library card. The websites are used on a laptop in dictionary corner, which replaced the use of a print dictionary in 2014. The last edition of the print dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE), is still part of the goody bag.
Any word offered by a contestant which has its own entry 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 Premium first. If their word is invalid, it is then searched under the 'UK Dictionary' section of the Lexico website; if it can be found in Lexico, 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.
The British English section contains some entries from the US English dictionary in Premium, which are indicated by "Entry from US English Dictionary" underneath the phonetic spelling; an example of this is COQUI. These cannot be found under UK Dictionary in Lexico, but will still be allowed on Countdown. 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 Premium that are erroneously uncapitalised in Lexico (e.g. mohawk ☓) are invalid.
Premium and Lexico are updated with thousands of new words each year (sometimes simultaneously). In order to keep in sync with both websites and Countdown rules, the Apterous website's facsimile of the 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 nor in other dictionaries (both print and online).
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).
