The Digital Dictionary of the German Language (Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, DWDS) is a lexical information system that provides information about German vocabulary in the present and past. As a frequently used reference work, it addresses a broad target group: in addition to those interested in language, the service is used intensely by writers, learners of German and, as an important working tool, by researchers in the humanities and social sciences.
The core of the DWDS is the DWDS dictionary, a monolingual dictionary of contemporary German. It provides information on form (spelling, grammar) and meaning (definitions, semantic relationships) as well as usage (authentic examples) for approximately 270,000 keywords. The DWDS dictionary is based on lexical knowledge from three major contemporary dictionaries of the German language: the six-volume “Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache” (WDG, 1952–1977), supplemented by sections from the “Großes Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache” (GWDS, 1999) and the “WAHRIG Deutsches Wörterbuch” (WAHRIG, 2011/2018). The DWDS lexicographers update this dictionary content on the basis of very large text corpora and also add dictionary entries for new words that are not described in the three major dictionaries mentioned above.
As a web-based platform (www.dwds.de ), the DWDS also offers statistical data on German vocabulary, including the frequency of words over time and their regional distribution. It also provides free access to extensive and diverse text corpora comprising around 70 billion text words, as well as to other German dictionaries such as the “Deutsches Wörterbuch” by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm.
Launched in 2007 and scheduled to run for 18 years, this long-term Academy Project involves scientists from the fields of lexicography and linguistics, computational linguistics, and information technology. The project is affiliated with the “Language Centre” of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. As part of the Academies' Programme of the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, it is co-financed by the German federal government and the states of Berlin and Brandenburg. It is also part of the “Zentrum für digitale Lexikographie der deutschen Sprache” (ZDL), which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, as well as the states of Berlin, Brandenburg, and Lower Saxony.