I know we all use WordReference for everything: it’s easy; it has everything we need (a really

I know we all use WordReference for everything: it’s easy; it has everything we need (a really useful App that you can use anytime, a forum where you can ask for opinions, you have the conjugations and sometimes you have a synonymous dictionary, too!). But sometimes you need to be more precise with your definition, so you need to use other dictionaries or resources.

First of all, I don’t think you know what dictionary the interface Word Reference actually uses: for the Spanish monolingual dictionary they use Espasa-Calpe’s 2005 Diccionario de la lengua española, they use the same editorial house for their synonymous dictionary in Spanish (Diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos). Another great thing you can find in WordReference is that sometimes they have native’s audios (they have Central-North Spanish accent and Argentinian’s rioplatense accent right now).

But what if you need more recent definitions? In the past 10 years a lot of words have been added to different dictionaries (even RAE’s!), so I’m going to make a list of the most useful. I’m probably going to include some other resources, such as corpuses and conjugators.

GENERAL

Diccionario de la lengua española de la RAE – from 2014 (23rd edition)

There are two interfaces that use DRAE: GoodRAE (where you can search words from the definition) and diRAE (where you can be more specific about your research)

Diccionario panhispánico de dudas de la RAE – you can use this one when you have any doubts about a word or a concept: you can search ‘yeísmo’ and it shows a more complete definition than the one in the DRAE, or you can search a loanword such as ‘zapping’ and it will give you the preferable word in Spanish (in this case, ‘zapeo’), this is from 2005.
Diccionario esencial de la RAE – it’s from 2006 and it only has the basic vocabulary
Diccionario de uso del español actual de Ediciones SM – from 2006, it shows you a little bit of the word’s syntax, spelling and etymologic.
Diccionario Salamanca de la Lengua Española de Santillana – from 1996, there are some words that don’t exist in this dictionary, although it’s a good resource because it shows when you have to use certain words, or some phrases you can use.
Diccionario Larousse – from 2012, it shows the origin of the word, an example of the word used in a sentence and some synonymous.

In diccionarios.com you also have an English-Spanish dictionary and a French-Spanish one, too. There are other kinds of dictionaries in Spanish, but you’ll have to pay.

Wikcionario – just like Wikipedia, you need to know that anybody can edit the content

REGIONALISMS AND COLLOQUIALISMS

Diccionario de americanismos de la ASALE – from 2010, in here you can search great part of the regionalisms, it will show you a definition and where it’s said.
Diccionario del español de México (Colegio de México) – focused on Mexican Spanish, it has different PDFs with some basic information about numbers or Mexican demonyms, etc.
CVC’s collection of Diccionarios del español y sus variantes dialectales – some of the links don’t work

InJergas de habla hispana you can find the online version of Diccionario de coloquialismos y términos dialectales del español.

Coloquialmente – European Spanish’s colloquialisms
Diccionario de español coloquial (DEC) – it also has a dictionary with lots of gestures

SYNONYMS/ANTONYMS

Universidad de Oviedo: diccionario de sinónimos; de antónimos
Diccionario de Antónimos
Diccionario de Sinónimos
Buscapalabras
Cómo se dice
El País

CONJUGATORS/LEMMATIZATION TOOLS

Onoma – you can invent your own verb and it will be conjugated as a regular verb
Universidad de Gran Canaria – you can choose the tense
Spanish FrameNet – semantic and morphological information
FreeLing – morphological and parsing analysis

CORPORA