Oxford
Access Oxford dictionary definitions, pronunciations, and lexical data via API.
Read docs Updated 2026-06-17
What is Oxford?
The Oxford API provides machine-readable dictionary data covering definitions, pronunciations, and related lexical information for text processing applications.
It supports developers implementing dictionary lookup, language analysis, or educational tools that require accurate lexical content from established dictionary sources.
What you can build with Oxford
Build a vocabulary builder app
Fetch definitions, examples, and pronunciations to power flashcards and quizzes in language learning mobile or web apps.
Enhance writing tools with synonyms
Integrate thesaurus lookups to suggest alternative words and improve text in real-time editors or content platforms.
Power word validation in games
Validate player-submitted words against dictionary entries for spelling, existence, and part-of-speech checks in word games.
Get started with Oxford
- 1Sign up at the Oxford Dictionaries developer portal and obtain an API key
- 2Review the endpoint reference and data models in the official documentation
- 3Add your API key to request headers for authentication
- 4Test a sample call to the /words or /entries endpoint using curl or Postman
- 5Parse the returned JSON to extract definitions, pronunciations or synonyms
Oxford: pros & cons
Pros
- +High-quality, lexicographically curated data
- +Rich structured responses including examples and audio
- +Reliable uptime and clear versioning
- +Broad English coverage with regional variants
Cons
- –Free tier has strict rate limits
- –Primarily focused on English
- –Advanced features require paid plans
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Frequently asked questions
It provides access to dictionary data including definitions, synonyms, pronunciations and example sentences via REST endpoints.
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