DICTIONARIES

The ✪ star ratings reflect just my own perception of how useful these resources can be for students, and also the ones I personally tend to use more. Most of the following dictionaries include pronunciation, phonetic symbols, sentences showing usage examples and a thesaurus (synonym dictionary).

☛ Tip: enter the same word in different dictionaries and compare the information you get in each of them, to decide which will be the most useful for you.

☛ Remember: whenever you look up a word in a bilingual Spanish-English dictionary, you need to get confirmation in an English-only that the translation you got is the one you really need, by looking at its definition and examples.

• ✪✪✪✪✪ Macmillan: (English) - good, clear definitions and example sentences; learner-oriented, notes on usual problems - excellent for B1 and above.
• https://www.macmillandictionary.com/ 
• ✪✪✪✪✪ Cambridge: (English // English-Spanish // Spanish-English) 
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ - good, concise definitions and examples - it covers words at all levels, from A1 to C2; excellent for B1 and above
• ✪✪✪✪✪ Cambridge Learner's Dictionary:
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-english/ - a shorter, easier option, focusing on the language for intermediate B1-B2;  words, phrases, and collocations that intermediate learners of British English need to know. Clear, simple definitions and audio pronunciations, with carefully chosen example sentences
• ✪✪✪✪✪ Longman (English // English-Spanish // Spanish-English) - similar to Cambridge, with some additional features: every example sentence is recorded, and every entry includes collocations and synonyms
• https://www.ldoceonline.com//
• ✪✪✪✪ Oxford - more complex definitions; real examples from newspapers and media; very comprehensive, but best for B2-C1 and above.
• English: https://www.lexico.com/en
• English-Spanish // Spanish-English: https://www.lexico.com/es
• ✪✪✪✪✪ Oxford Learner's Dictionaries (English)
• https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com - English and American English dictionaries are free; short, concise definitional and examples; it includes grammar notes and collocations. There are other great resources, such as Practical English Usage and the Collocations Dictionary, which you have to buy an access code to use.
• ✪✪✪✪✪ Oxford Online Collocations Dictionary - (free version) a completely new type of dictionary with word collocations that helps students and advanced learners effectively study, write and speak natural-sounding English
• http://www.freecollocation.com/
• ✪✪✪ Collins (English // English-Spanish // Spanish-English) 
• https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
• ✪✪✪ Merriam-Webster: American English - best for B2-C1 and above - similar to Oxford but not so comprehensive and less user-friendly
• http://www.merriam-webster.com/
• ✪✪✪✪ Visual Thesaurus:  an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words. Its innovative display encourages exploration and learning. 
• http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ - you can buy a subscription but you can look up for free a limited number of words per day; really useful and different.
• ✪✪✪ Urban Dictionary: a crowd-sourced online dictionary, which was originally intended as a dictionary of slang, or cultural words or phrases, not typically found in standard dictionaries, but it is now used to define any word, event or phrase. Words or phrases may have multiple definitions, usage examples, and tags. [☢ But note that anyone can write an entry, so the quality standards may not be very high.]
• http://www.urbandictionary.com/