Games, books, and quiz shows: supporting integrated dictionary experiences
At OUP, we recognize the importance of building confidence around reading, nurturing it as an essential skill for success, and inspiring a lifelong love of reading that can continue throughout people’s lives. All forms of reading are valid, and we support reading in a variety of digital formats, broadening access to reading opportunities in line with our mission.
Expanding access to language and literacy is reflected in the work of our Oxford Languages team. Not only does the team publish trusted dictionaries, it also provides the lexical and language datasets empowering a wide range of technologies and applications, supporting learning and comprehension across our digital lives.
Oxford Languages offers a variety of dictionary data in more than 60 languages. Providing dictionary content in digital format supports integrated experiences in operating systems, eReaders, educational software, accessibility tools, and more. These digitally embedded experiences have become the preferred route to find the meaning of a word or synonyms in the digital age.
Supporting a lifelong love of reading
The ability to support comprehension, vocabulary development, and inclusive learning is just as important as the content itself.
Through Sora, a reading app developed by OverDrive, we’re able to enhance reading outcomes for millions of readers of all ages by making trusted language data available through a global digital library platform.
Our dictionary data is integrated into the app, allowing students to seamlessly look up accurate definitions for words as they encounter them, including via Sora’s ‘read-along’ mode.
Nilanjana Banerji
Product Manager in Oxford Languages
“Research shows a strong relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge, and support for vocabulary and comprehension is critical to digital literacy, fluency, and independence in digital reading. It is also important to recognize and acknowledge diversity in the field of learning and the different requirements of students from different language backgrounds, who benefit from different types of support. It is why in Oxford Languages, we also focus on localization, translation, and bilingual support for learners and are actively developing inclusive products with language pairs for two-way support for readers, in English and in their own native language, for fuller comprehension.”
Inspiring a new generation of poets
We’ve worked with the charity Poetry by Heart since it was founded in 2012. Its national poetry-speaking competition for schools and colleges in England helps to develop students’ confidence in poetry in an accessible and engaging way.
The charity’s website contains anthologies which link out to selected open access Oxford English Dictionary (OED) entries, allowing students to explore the historical context behind the language used in poems, deepening their appreciation and understanding of the art form.
The competition has continued to grow, and in 2025 over 127,000 young people were invited to learn a poem, with over 1,600 schools taking part in the national competition. Each winner is awarded a digital subscription to the OED for their school, as well as a book of poetry published by OUP to take home. We’re proud to work alongside Poetry by Heart to foster a lifelong appreciation of poetry and language beyond the classroom.
Playing with words
We provide word game developers with our language data so that they can create games that challenge players to expand their vocabulary.
We support two types of word games. ‘Word validation’ ensures that a word played in a game is a real word, like in Scrabble or Wordle. Most games display a short definition to prove the validity of any word that is challenged, and so developers require a list of words and definitions to be able to validate the words in the game.
The other type is ‘word selection’, where games such as Wordle or wordsearches already have pre-selected words in the background as answers that the player is looking for. Developers need additional metadata such as wordform frequencies to be able to select familiar or unfamiliar words according to difficulty levels. They might want to exclude words like proper nouns, abbreviations, or vulgar and offensive words.
In conversation with the mobile game developer Easybrain, we came up with the idea of creating a package of dictionary-related features from our database in a consistent, clear format to serve as a toolkit to developing a variety of word games. Thanks to our toolkit, we’re supporting developers to create appropriate, family-friendly games backed by our trusted language data, including Easybrain’s Easy Words. More recently, we’ve been working with a nursing start-up with an interest in how neuro training can support patients with symptoms of dementia, to create the word game Cattywampus. And finally, Netflix’s Boggle Party is powered by our data to validate words and provide definitions.
More information about the toolkit can be found here.
Seen (and heard) on screen
Our dictionaries and their data are intrinsic to programmes like Countdown, in which Oxford dictionaries are used to validate contestants’ answers as well as to suggest even longer, or more interesting, words.
This year, Jeopardy! added a new category to their quiz show named ‘New to the OED’, testing contestants’ knowledge of words that entered the Oxford English Dictionary in one of our previous updates.
Meanwhile, BBC Breakfast has launched a quiz featuring questions compiled by our lexicographers. One such question looked for avian-related synonyms of the words quick, ultramarine, avoid, cower, and kooky. Ready for the answers? Head to the BBC Breakfast Instagram.
Lastly, you can now hear from OED editors Fiona McPherson and Craig Leyland in our brand-new podcast, Lexipoddery. Listen as Fiona and Craig discuss recent additions to the OED, disclose the mysterious practices of the historical lexicographer, and highlight intriguing aspects of our language’s evolution.
Fiona McPherson
Executive Editor, Oxford English Dictionary
“OUP’s mission is central to everything that the OED does, and public engagement plays a huge role in that. It is something that the OED has always valued and celebrated, from the early days of compiling the First Edition to the quarterly OED updates published online now. The work we do as OED editors is both informed by, and helps to, foster a love of words and learning in the public; whether it is by them contacting us about words they have encountered in their daily lives which are not yet included in the OED, furnishing us with supporting material for the words already included, or even by the positive responses to our updates.
“As we approach the 100-year anniversary of the completion of the First Edition of the OED, it’s interesting to reflect on how those original editors might have viewed the work of their modern-day counterparts, and what they might have made of a very 21st century example of public engagement—the launch of an OED podcast.”
You can join our mailing list to receive updates about celebrating the centenary of the Oxford English Dictionary in 2028 here.
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