I got a note from the folks at WebFinance letting me know that they’ve launched a bunch of new dictionaries within the last few months. You can get a full list of the dictionaries available at http://www.businessdictionary.com/aboutus.php, but here’s a list of some
highlights.

InvestorWords.com — Over 7500 words relating to finance and investing with lots of crosslinking. Words have spoken pronunciations available, but I’m wondering how useful they are. I heard EBITDA pronounced as “EEE-bit-deh,” when I had always heard it on CNBC as “Eee-bit-DAH.” Not that CNBC is canon or anything.

InfoScienceDictionary.com — Over 6000 terms related to library science and knowledge management. Strangely I didn’t find “MLS” when I did a search. Pages are basic with just the definition and some tools for citation, translation, and ranking definitions.

EnglishDefined.com — English terms in common usage with fairly simple definitions. Definitions also include related words and “nearby” words (for example characterize had as nearby words character, characterization, and characteristic. Over 20,000 definitions here.

IdiomDictionary.com — Over 5000 idioms explained, which is not nearly enough. A day without a good idiom is like a day without sunshine. Er. Or something. Anyway, the listings include a definition, an example, and some notes on the usage of the word. The page for Mess of pottage notes that the idiom came from the Bible and is now in uncommon use. Some of these definitions and examples felt very British. (Not necessarily a bad thing.)

Word-Origins.com — The etymology of about 7,000 words. The word origins themselves were pretty thorough — at least the ones I looked at — but the related words were odd. Related to the word apple — apricot, cider, pomegranate. (Okay.) Thyroid. (Huh?) Some crosslinking but not so much that the definitions are unreadable.

There are many, many, many dictionaries online and you may find ones that have more data, especially for topics like etymology. But the dictionaries here were fast-loading and simple to use.