Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus

The basics

Offline English dictionary with clear word definitions, synonyms, and vocabulary. That is how MobiSystems pitches Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus on Google Play, where it sits in the Books & Reference category and carries a content rating of Everyone.

Reading the star ratings

Look at the bars rather than just the average. Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus scores 4.35, but the spread is 71.9% five star, 12.2% four star, 4.0% three star, 2.6% two star and 9.3% one star, across 544,454 ratings. Most people give it full marks, though the one star group is far from tiny.

Put differently, there are about 8 five star ratings for every one star rating, 391,274 against 50,793. The middle of the scale, two and three stars together, holds 6.6% of ratings (36,057 people). The listing shows 50,000,000+ installs, so the 544,454 ratings come from a slice of the people who installed it.

Listing details

The listing shows last updated Oct 28, 2026, version 16.8.1189, Android 8.0 or newer, a content rating of Everyone and first released Mar 28, 2013. The Play page carries 24 screenshots, and the written description runs to about 433 words. Google Play labels it as one that contains ads and offers in-app purchases. There is no upfront price.

Features, as listed

The listing goes on to say “18 Oxford dictionaries in one app: 5 monolingual and 13 bilingual, powered by Oxford Languages”. One more point the description makes: “Look up definitions in the English dictionary, find synonyms in the Oxford thesaurus and translate words between English and 13 languages”. The description says: “An English dictionary with over 1 million words, phrases and definitions for students, teachers, writers and professionals”. In the developer’s words, “What can I do with Oxford Dictionary”.

It also states that “Look up clear English definitions with example sentences, idioms and phrases”. Another line from the listing: “See grammar notes: part of speech, verb patterns and usage labels”. The listing goes on to say “Check phonetic spelling and British and American usage”. That is what the developer says the app does. How well it does it for your own use is a separate question.

Who should try it

People who need a books & reference app and want something with a big user base. 50 million+ installs means most questions have already been asked somewhere. Google Play gives it a content rating of Everyone, which is worth a look if a child will be using it.

The downsides

The listing says it contains ads and offers in-app purchases, so expect to be asked for attention or money at some point. Also, 9.3% of raters left one star, so the negative reviews are not a handful of outliers. Check the screenshots and the most recent reviews on the Play page before you rely on it.