Linguabase vs. Oxford Languages

Different architectures for different problems.

The Core Difference

Oxford answers: “What does X mean?” and “What’s similar to X?”

Linguabase answers those too, plus: “How hard is this word?” “What hints work without sharing morphology?” “Which sense of X connects to which sense of Y?”

Traditional dictionaries and thesauruses are designed for word substitution—helping writers replace one word with another. Linguabase is designed for word games—validated vocabulary, difficulty rankings, readable definitions, short clues for gameplay, content filters, and semantic connections that power hints and exploration mechanics.

Words with Spaces

Deep Dive
Words with Spaces — an interactive essay on the half-million compound phrases missing from dictionaries.Traditional dictionaries exclude most compound phrases—not because they aren’t words, but because they contain spaces. “Boiling water.” “Saturday night.” “Best friend.” These function as single semantic units—they name things—but dictionaries leave them out. Oxford includes opaque idioms like “red tape” and “cold feet” (where meaning isn’t predictable from parts), but skips transparent compounds that are just as real.

The result: roughly half a million English expressions that function as words aren’t in any dictionary.

For word games, this matters. Players think in concepts, not orthographic conventions. If your game accepts “discombobulate,” it should probably accept “paper towel.”

Linguabase includes ~200K multi-word expressions—compounds, phrasal verbs, and collocations that traditional dictionaries systematically exclude.

By the Numbers

Relationship Comparison

Oxford’s thesaurus is excellent at what it does — finding substitute words. But that’s a different problem than finding associated concepts.

Oxford helps writers find substitute words. Linguabase helps applications find where users’ minds might go—including senses (card games, guitar parts, dental work) that thesauruses don’t cover at all. See how we build sense-aware associations →

Definition Comparison

The clearest difference is in how definitions are structured.

Oxford “spring” (excerpt)

Linguabase “spring”

Oxford: 5 verb senses, 5 noun senses, sub-senses, phrases, derivatives, etymology — fragmented across 50+ lines. Designed for scholarly completeness.

Linguabase: One readable paragraph covering all senses naturally. Designed for display and AI consumption.

What Oxford Does Well

• Brand authority — “Powered by Oxford” deflects complaints
• Language coverage — 50+ languages from one vendor
• Audio pronunciations — Human-recorded for 500K+ words
• Scholarly completeness — Every usage documented

What Linguabase Does That Oxford Can’t

• Graph traversal — Find paths through meaning-space
• Sense-balanced associations — All meanings represented proportionally
• Weighted connections — Filter by relationship strength
• Directional weights — Know which direction is stronger
• 40M relationships — 66x Oxford’s synonym count
• False cognate removal — 291K wrong connections audited out (dig→digress, pan→pandemic)
• Gestalt associations — Experiential connections (crisis→siren, wedding→white)
• Usage examples — 1.5M illustrative quotations from literature, journalism, and scholarly sources

When to Use Oxford

• You need brand credibility (“Powered by Oxford”)
• You need 50+ languages from one vendor
• You need audio pronunciations
• Your use case is pure lookup

When to Use Linguabase

• You’re building word games (spelling, crossword, or semantic)
• You need validated word lists with difficulty rankings
• You need content filters for automated puzzle generation
• You need weighted connections with strength rankings
• You want narrative definitions for display and short clues for gameplay
• You need hints that don’t share morphology with the answer
• You’re building AI reasoning that needs conceptual grounding

We’re Not Competing on Brand

Oxford has 150 years of brand equity. We have over a decade of building vocabulary data for word games.

We’re not offering a cheaper Oxford. We’re offering something Oxford doesn’t provide: a complete vocabulary stack designed for game mechanics—difficulty rankings, content filters, weighted associations, short clues, and hints that don’t give away the answer.