Merriam-Webster announced its “Open Dictionary” this week, where “you can 1) submit and share entries that aren’t already in our Online Dictionary, and 2) browse entries submitted by other members of the Merriam-Webster Online community.”

Here’s the news release.

It sounds like an attempt to compete with the openness — and enviable traffic levels — of Wikipedia and Wiktionary. But it fails miserably. Merriam-Webster comes off like Grandma Mabel trying to groove to 50 Cent.

Someone in the Wikipedia newsroom posted this concise review:

It’s not really open, the entry form says nothing about the copyright status of entries, there seems to be no checking or editing of any entries … etc.

Media Orchard casually inspected the Open Dictionary and found this entry (obviously submitted by a subversive):

wiktionary (noun) : [coined word] An open-source dictionary, as based on the wiki engine system. I think I’ll go add some definitions to the wiktionary.

Nicole Stockdale has a nice review of the Open Dictionary at A Capital Idea.

(Image from The Illustrated Venright English Dictionary by William Davison and Sherri Lyn Higgins)

Technorati tags: Dictionaries, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Marketing, Merriam-Webster, Reference