Collins COBUILD Dictionaries

Collins COBUILD dictionary range for learners of English is the ultimate learner-friendly resource for reliable, accurate and fast learning of English. If you are studying English
as a foreign language, Collins COBUILD dictionaries are the perfect study companions.

Collins, in association with the University of Birmingham, and led by the pioneering
linguist John Sinclair, developed the very first corpus of English in the 1980s.
This corpus – the Collins Birmingham University International Language Database (COBUILD) – revolutionized dictionaries for learners of English. It became
the largest collection of English data in the world, bringing together words from
written and spoken English to provide evidence of how English was really used.
This meant that dictionary writers no longer had to rely on their own intuition about
English, but could check millions of words of data to see, for example, which
senses of a word might be the most frequently used, which words ‘go’ together,
how words are really used in sentences, and to find authentic examples
of English in use.

The first COBUILD dictionary was published in 1987, and it has been regularly
updated ever since. The Collins corpus now contains over 4 billion words taken
from websites, newspapers, magazines and books published all over the world,
and spoken material from radio, TV and everyday conversations. It is updated every
month to ensure that Collins captures new words and meanings as they enter the language. This means that you can rely on Collins, and Collins COBUILD: all of our explanations, examples and special features are based on analysis of the Collins corpus, so you
can trust Collins to help you speak and write accurate, effective, and up-to-date English.