Lexical Resources

Much research requires efficient data searches. For textual analyses that means inter alia knowledge of the lexical universe of the language, in which your data come. For the quantification of several methods, such as frame analysis, it is also important to get an idea about collocations of lexemes.

Word Maps

Word maps are the most useful lexical helpers for social research with texts. They not only list the synonyms and antonyms of words, but also increasingly report collocations of terms as well as word frequencies in general (or topic-specific) discourse.

•   Wordnet
  Well-established freeware that maps English with a focus on its North American variety.
•          Wortschatz at the University of Leipzig
  Probably the most extensive of word mapping currently available, Wortschatz focuses on German, but has massive collections on English, French, and Dutch. Smaller corpora in Icelandic, Estonian, and Sorabian.
•    Lexical FreeNet
  Online extension of Wordnet.
•  Edinburgh Word Association Thesaurus
  "The Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus (EAT) is a set of word association norms showing the counts of word association as collected from subjects."
•     Visual Thesaurus
  Stylish word mapping applet that requires Internet Explorer™ and its Flash™ plugin.

Thesauri

•    Merriam-Webster
  Merriam-Webster is the most important and extensive reference source for American English. It allows for British spelling.
•   hyperdictionary
  Combines the 1913 Webster dictionary and WordNet in one user interface.
•  ARTFL Roget's Thesaurus
  Dates back to 1911, maintained by the ARTFL project at the University of Chicago.
•  Diccionario de Español
  The University of Oviedo, Spain, offers a fairly extensive thesaurus in Spanish, which also lets you search for antonyms.
•   diccionarios.com
  Thesaurus allows search after synonyms and antonyms, also includes a variety of Spanish dictionaries.
•  Den Danske Ordbog
  Very comprehensive Dictionary in Danish, although slightly dated.

Monodirectional Dictionaries

In the absence of online thesauri, it is often a good idea to consult extensive online dictionaries, which frequently contain hints for synonyms.

•  ARTFL Dictionnaires d'autrefois
  Excellent online access to the most important French dictionaries from the XVII to the XX century.
•   sapere.it
  The most comprehensive Italian online dictionary.
•     Dicionário Universal Língua Portuguesa
  Commercial, but free of charge accessible European and Brazilian Portuguese dictionary, which contains many synonymous in most explications. A version for Cape Verdean creole is also available.
•  Svenska Akademiens Ordbok
  Swedish dictionary that is not really a thesaurus, but its extensive explications and etymological data usually dig up many synonyms.
•  Bokmålsordboka og Nynorskordboka
  Extensive online dictionary at the University of Oslo. Allows for both varieties of Norwegian.
•  Wörtbuch-Netz
  A number of historical dictionaries for different German dialects. Includes the Brothers-Grimm-Wörterbuch, probably the most extensive German dictionary of the XIX century. Further readings

Multi and Bi-directional Dictionaries

If you are doing comparative research, these dictionaries might come handy.

•  Eurodicautom
  Multilingual Dictionary developed by the EU for 16 languages from the 2003 European Union member states.
•   Lexilogos
  Excellent collection of online dictionaries, easily intelligble French interface.
•   LOGOS
  Multilingual dictionary, gradually compiled by a network of professional translators.
•  <->   ARTFL French/English
  Extensive dictionary, compiled within the ARTFL project.
•  <->    LEO German/English & German/French
  Extensive dictionary, maintained by the Technical University of Munich.
•  <->   sapere.it
  Translates from Italian to English, French, Turkish, Albanian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, and Tagalog.
•  <->    Cambridge Spanish/English
  Efficient Spanish/English dictionary.
•  <->    DIX
  Quite extensive Spanish-German dictionary.
•    <->  recnik.com
  Most extensive online dictionary of Serbo-Croat/Bosnian, using the Latinic variety of the Serbian dialect.
•  ROMLEX
  Excellent dictionary that translates different Romany dialects into a number of languages, among them English.
•  <->    English-German-Hungarian Dictionary
  Private Wiki-Project with a reasonable sized database
•  <->  Hazar
•  <->   WWWJDIC
•  <->  Wadoku