What are the best monolingual dictionaries of each language?

[rlnv]

I think this is primarily a discussion of personal favorites. I have a number of mono and multilingual French and English dictionaries. For my purposes, I believe I have the best available. But by no means, are they necessarily "the best".

There are criteria that must be considered. Is is the most up comprehensive and to date, or does it have historic usage? What format or formats is it available? There could be online, paper, mobile, e-reader, computer OS, database, and maybe more. Does the volume conform to a governing body for official usage? I'm sure there are more considerations.

[tractor]

I think this is primarily a discussion of personal favorites. I have a number of mono and multilingual French and English dictionaries. For my purposes, I believe I have the best available. But by no means, are they necessarily "the best".

There are criteria that must be considered. Is is the most up comprehensive and to date, or does it have historic usage? What format or formats is it available? There could be online, paper, mobile, e-reader, computer OS, database, and maybe more. Does the volume conform to a governing body for official usage? I'm sure there are more considerations.

I agree with this, but I still think this is a useful thread. If I hadn't read this thread, I wouldn't have heard about Antidote, mentioned by Sizen on the first page. After reading his/her post, I bought it for my iPad, and I think it's an amazing resource.

[William Camden]

Deutsch Als Fremdsprache by Langenscheidt, aimed at foreign learners of German, is good. Petit Robert for French. About two decades ago there was an excellent 'first monolingual' dictionary of French published by Hodder & Stoughton or Harrap but I have not been able to trace it since.

[tractor]

Deutsch Als Fremdsprache by Langenscheidt, aimed at foreign learners of German, is good.

Yes, it's good. Overall, I find the definitions to be significantly easier to understand than in the Duden Deutsches Universalwörterbuch. The downside is that it doesn't contain as many entries. I also miss etymological information, but that's only because I'm a nerd.

The competitor Pons has put their DaF dictionary online: http://de.pons.com/
I haven't used it much, so I don't know how it compares to Langenscheidt's, but at least it can be used for free.

The monumental Grimm Deutsches Wörterbuch is also online: http://dwb.uni-trier.de/de/

[tractor]

For Catalan, there's the Diccionari de la llengua catalana which serves its purpose quite well.

The DIEC2 is not bad at all, but the Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana (GDLC) is more comprehensive: http://www.diccionari.cat

Then there's the much larger (10 volumes) Diccionari català–valencià–balear (DCVB): http://dcvb.iecat.net

[peterbeischmidt]

Strictly speaking not 'the best', but here's an excellent monolingual dictionary for learners of Turkish:
https://www.turkishbooks.com/books/ogre ... 45663.html

[FyrsteSumarenINoreg]

For Nynorsk>

Nynorskordboka
https://ordbok.uib.no/perl/ordbok.cgi?n ... norsk&OPP=


Norsk ordbok
http://no2014.uib.no/perl/ordbok/no2014.cgi

[Ogrim]

For Nynorsk>

Nynorskordboka
https://ordbok.uib.no/perl/ordbok.cgi?n ... norsk&OPP=


Norsk ordbok
http://no2014.uib.no/perl/ordbok/no2014.cgi

For Norwegian bokmål I prefer Det Norske Akademis ordbok. This is the new version of the old Riksmålsordboken, so it uses a rather conservative form of bokmål, but the great thing about it is that you will find a lot of examples of how the words are used with plenty of quotes from Norwegian literature.