Oxford English Dictionary Actor

Scrapes word definitions and metadata from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) advanced search results.

Target URL: https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Entries

Overview

This actor automates data extraction from the OED's advanced search. It navigates search results and detail pages to collect comprehensive lexical data for given search terms. It's built on the Apify platform using Puppeteer.

Key Features

• Word Data Extraction: Scrapes headword, part of speech, pronunciation, definitions, etymology, and usage examples.
• Pagination Handling: Automatically traverses multiple pages of search results.
• Request Queue Management: Efficiently processes large lists of search queries from the input dataset.
• Structured Output: Returns clean, organized data in JSON format, suitable for databases or analysis.

How to Use

Run the actor with a list of search terms. Configure the run settings (like max results per query) via the input.

Input Configuration

The input is a JSON object. Provide an array of search queries and optionally adjust the maxResultsPerQuery.

{
  "queries": [
    "lexicography",
    "api",
    "serendipity"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 50
}

• queries: Required. An array of strings (words/phrases) to look up in the OED.
• maxResultsPerQuery: Optional. Maximum number of word entries to scrape per query. Default is 50.

Running the Actor

1. Set your input JSON in the Apify console, UI, or via API.
2. Start the run. The actor will open a browser, perform searches, and scrape the resulting pages.
3. Download or access the results from the dataset when the run completes.

Input/Output

Input Schema

As shown in the How to Use section, the input requires a queries array.

Output Schema

Results are stored in the dataset as individual items, each representing a scraped word entry. The structure includes:

{
  "query": "serendipity",
  "headword": "serendipity, n.",
  "pronunciation": "/ˌsɛrənˈdɪpɪti/",
  "partOfSpeech": "noun",
  "definitions": [
    "The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident."
  ],
  "etymology": "Mid 19th century: from Serendip + -ity...",
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "a fortunate stroke of serendipity",
      "source": "2002, N.Y. Times"
    }
  ],
  "url": "https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/176289"
}

Key Fields:
* query: The original search term.
* headword: The canonical dictionary entry heading.
* pronunciation: Phonetic transcription.
* partOfSpeech: Grammatical category (noun, verb, etc.).
* definitions: Array of meaning definitions.
* etymology: Word origin and history.
* examples: Array of usage example objects with text and source.
* url: Source URL on oed.com.

Find this actor on the Apify platform: https://apify.com/your-actor-profile/oxford-english-dictionary?fpr=python_automation