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The Macquarie Dictionary Online – uniquely Australian

By Federico Pani | 2 June 2020

Looking for the meaning of furphy, smoko, zambuck or piker? For a uniquely Australian perspective on words the Macquarie Dictionary is an outstanding resource. Better still the Macquarie Dictionary Online is free for members of State Library of Queensland. You can become a member today for immediate access to these and other digital resources.

The Macquarie Dictionary was first published in 1981 and has been online since 2003. It is regularly updated with new words as they enter the Australian language and includes definitions of words that are not so common anymore. The Macquarie Dictionary Online has easy searching of over 138 000 words and phrases and over 210 000 definitions, with the ability to search the dictionary, thesaurus or both.

The Macquarie Dictionary Online has some great features such as Punctuation and Grammar guides to help you with anything: from commas to colons and capital letters to collective nouns. For a little extra help with crosswords select the Macquarie Wildcard feature under Language Resources > Crossword Resources. This allows you to enter the letters you know and find the letters you don't know for an unknown word in a crossword puzzle. Simply enter what you know together with a hash (#) for each missing letter and any word which matches will appear in your results. Each word also has a link to its dictionary definition.

The Macquarie Dictionary Online  - wildcard page

There is even an Australian word map which allows you to search or browse for words or phrases that are specific to a region of Australia.

The Macquarie Dictionary Online – word search

Connect with State Library today and discover the Macquarie Dictionary Online.

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