Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Lexico dictionary website ceased operations on the 26th of August 2022. This shutdown redirected millions of daily users to a commercial competitor and marked the end of an era for free online lexicography.
Lexico was a unique collaboration between the historic Oxford University Press and the commercial entity Dictionary.com. The partnership allowed the publishing house to offer free access to its modern English and Spanish dictionaries to the general public.
The Oxford English Dictionary served as a historical record documenting all core words and meanings over more than 1,000 years, while Lexico focused on current English and prioritized the most important and common meanings of words in modern usage. The Oxford English Dictionary ordered meanings chronologically, whereas Lexico presented the most relevant definitions first to assist contemporary users.
By the time the remaining Oxford Living Dictionaries websites were closed in March 2020, the platform hosted a diverse array of languages including Malay, Urdu, Tswana, Indonesian, Romanian, Latvian, Swahili, Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Tatar, Xhosa, Southern Quechua, Tajik, Tok Pisin, Turkmen, Telugu, and Greek. The project began in 2014 with Zulu and Northern Sotho as part of an attempt to create online dictionaries for under-resourced languages.
The name Lexico was derived from the former name of the company Dictionary.com, known as Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. This naming choice symbolized the merger of academic rigor with commercial accessibility.