In hard copy, I've yet to see anything quite comparable to Longman's Contemporary or Collins COBUILD for any of my target languages, although I have a couple of dictionaries on my shelf that are a bit like Collins COBUILD, in addition to having used some fairly good ones for advanced learners on-line.
For German, I recommend the following hard copies for advanced learners:
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Langenscheidt Großwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache-
Duden - Das StilwörterbuchThe Langenscheidt monolingual dictionary has about 90,000 headwords, usages and example sentences. In addition to providing grammatical hints (i.e. gender, and endings of nom. plur. and gen. sing. for nouns, case governance for prepositions, 3rd person sing. form in present and/or preterite, auxiliary verb for perfect, and past participle for verbs) beside every headword, everything is defined in German with a few collocations usually shown providing hints about idiomatic usage (cf. hashimi's comment about
fruition and how a simple definition may not necessarily guide the learner to use it idiomatically). All of the above is often enhanced by most headwords having at least one example sentence.
Here's the entry for
Aas "carcass, carrion"
Langenscheidt Großwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache: 'Aas' wrote:Aas das; <-es> 1 das Fleisch von einem toten Tier | Geier und Hyänen fressen Aas K Aasfresser 2 gesprochen, abwertend als Schimpfwort verwendet für einen bösen, gemeinen Menschen 3 kein Aas gesprochen, abwertend ≈ niemand | Das interessiert kein Aas!
For those who don't know German, here's what I get:
- the gender is neuter (i.e.
das)
- the genitive singular ending is
-es (i.e. <-es>)
- the main definition in 1 is "flesh of a dead animal" with an example sentence "Vultures and hyenas eat carrion."
- I also get a compound meaning "scavenger" (i.e.
Aasfresser - "carrion-eater")
- a secondary definition used derogatively in speech to refer to a very unpleasant and mean-spirited person
- a teritary definition found in coarse speech when preceded by
kein "not (a, any)" means something like "nobody" clarified by the example sentence "That doesn't (even) interest a carcass!" (idiomatically: "Nobody gives a damn!")
Here's the entry for
abebben "to decline, ebb, fade"
Langenscheidt Großwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache: 'abebben' wrote:ạb·eb·ben V/I <ebbte ab, ist abgeebbt> etwas ebbt ab etwas wird geringer, weniger, schwächer <das Hochwasser, das Interesse, der Lärm>
Here's what I get:
- the stress falls on the first syllable
- it's intransitive
- the 3rd person singular in preterite is
ebbte ab while for perfect it conjugates
sein "to be" for its auxiliary verb and its past participle (Partizip II) is
abgeebbt- the main definition as something that becomes smaller, less numerous or weaker
- collocations include using it with
das Hochwasser "flood",
das Interesse "interest" and
der Lärm "(annoying/disruptive) noise"
The
Stilwörterbuch by Duden is a little similar to the
Großwörterbuch by Langenscheidt but focuses on collocations.
Duden - Das Stilwörterbuch: 'Aas' wrote:Aas, das:
1. Tierleiche: faulendes, stinkendes A.; A. wittern, fressen; Hyänen leben von A.; R wo ein A. ist, da sammeln sich die Geier.
2. (ugs. abwertend) /oft als Schimpfwort/ niederträchtiger Mensch: ein gemeines, faules A.; so ein raffiniertes A.!; diese verkommenen Äser/ (seltener:) Aase; /oft mit dem Unterton der [widerstrebenden] Anerkennung/: so ein schlaues A.!
* kein Aas (salopp; niemand): diesen Ort kennt kein A.; es ist noch kein A. da
Here's what I get:
- the gender is neuter (i.e.
das)
- the main definition in 1 is "carcass" with common collocations including "rotting, stinking carcass" and "to pick up the scent of, feed on a carcass" with an example sentence "Hyenas live off carrion."
- there's also a fixed phrase or saying using
Aas translated as "Where there's a carcass, vultures gather."
- a secondary definition in 2 is used derogatively (and often as an insult) in colloquial settings to refer to a vile person with collocations linked to "mean" and "rotten, lazy " and example phrases "Such a refined đïçкћéàđ/carcass!" and "These immoral đïçкћéàđš/carcasses"
- furthermore, using the term this way could betray a certain grudging respect on the speaker's part as demonstrable in the exclamation "Such a sly S.O.B./carcass!"
- a less insulting but still colloquial use of the term along the lines of the secondary definition above is to use it to mean "nobody" as demonstrated in the example sentences "This place is known by nobody" and "There isn't even a carcass here/there (idiomatically: "Nobody's even there.")
Duden - Das Stilwörterbuch: 'abebben' wrote:ạbebben:
die Erregung, die Euphorie, der Streit, die Unruhe ebbte langsam ab; der Lärm ist abgeebbt; das Interesse an diesem Thema ist in der Öffentlichkeit mittlerweile abgeebbt.
Here's what I get:
- several collocations with the verb: "The thrill / euphoria / dispute / turmoil slowly faded; the noise has faded; the interest in this subject among the public has meanwhile died down"
Although I think that the price of the latest edition of each dictionary is reasonable (around 25 Euros), you can sometimes find used copies of older editions (and not necessarily ones dating from before the spelling reforms of 1996) on Amazon Marketplace for a lot less.
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There are some on-line monolingual dictionaries for free that resemble in varying degrees the preceding two hard copies for German in providing definitions, example sentences, collocations and grammatical hints.
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Hrvatski jezični portal (Croatian but obviously useful for anyone studying Bosnian, Montenegrin or Serbian instead - a database that draws on several descriptive and encyclopedic reference material issued around 2000 in Croatia)
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Slovník současné češtiny (Czech)
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Eesti keele seletav sõnaraamat (Estonian)
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Kielitoimiston sanakirja (Finnish)
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Wörterbuch Duden online (German - the amount of information for entries here often exceeds what you get with the hard copies that I've mentioned above)
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Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (German - its entries aren't quite as packed with information as the online Duden linked above but it's still very useful with its example sentences taken from corpora spanning literature of the 19th century to attestations in newspapers as recent as the 2000s. It's rather what you'd get online if you were to combine Langenscheidt's
Großwörterbuch and Duden's
Das Stilwörterbuch which I recommended at the start of this post)
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A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára (Hungarian - a little old as it's an online version of the 7-volume explanatory dictionary released between 1959 and 1962, but still useful for an advanced learner with its definitions, collocations and example sentences)
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Wielki słownik języka polskiego (Polish)
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Slovenské slovníky (Slovak - rather similar to the Croatian database in that it draws on several Slovak dictionaries and corpora)
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Slovar slovenskega knjižnega jezika (Slovenian)
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СЛОВНИК.ua тлумачний словник (Ukrainian)
Similarly useful for advanced learners of certain big-name languages are on-line bilingual dictionaries hosted by
PONS although these provide counterparts of the target language with those in the intermediary language rather than definitions in the target language. For some reason only the English <> German dictionary complements entries with example sentences drawn from the internet. Needless to say the massive unabridged bilingual dictionaries published by Collins or Oxford for FIGS are pretty good too, although for reasons of space usually have fewer example sentences and collocations, and resort more to abbreviations and cross-referencing than their online counterparts.