If you want to know what the word 'lexicography' means, what would you do? If you have a smartphone or computer, these days you ‘Google it’, rather than reaching for the dictionary. So what does that mean for the dictionaries business of Oxford University Press?

The ‘Oxford’ publishing brand is 500 years old and known worldwide for its printed dictionaries, but 19 per cent of overall sales are now digital, and it is no coincidence that OUP's new finance director, Giles Spackman, has come from the Internet search engine Google.

Last month, the website www. oxforddictionaries.com was relaunched and Judy Pearsall, editorial director for dictionaries at OUP, says the aim is to put Oxford on top when people search the Internet for the meaning of a word.

She said: “We have to make all our content as accessible and visible and useable as it can be. As well as redesigning, we have also restructured the website to enable people to interact more easily, to write more perceptively — and giving people the information more quickly, whether they need to know what a work means or how to spell it.”

‘Intuitive searching’ helps with the fact that words are often mis-spelled.

Ms Pearsall said: “We have a great feature where it will tell you the possibilities. If you type in a wrong spelling it will ask you, 'Did you mean this?'. It is intuitive, and if you want to know how a word is pronounced it will tell you. There are real examples of usage, taken from our own research."

When I did a Google search for 'lexicography', the first result was from Wikipedia. But the second click took me to oxforddictionaries.com, a free website with advertising.

When I tell Ms Pearsall this, she said: “We would like to be number one. We are ambitious, because we know we have good content."

But when I suggest the Oxford website might be more reliable than Wikipedia, she resists the temptation to criticise the opposition.

“They are different things. I think there is a good case for using Wikipedia. But if you are trying to define a word, typically, individual language users are not good at it, so wiki dictionary is less successful.”

She added: “Our website is the surface of all our research — we have the largest research programme of English language in the world. You know that our content has come from people who are experts.”

There are word games, too and traditionalists will be delighted at the spelling and apostrophe tests.

Income will come from subscribers who opt for the advertisement-free version of the site, as well as from advertisers.

Oxfordshire residents, incidentally, can get a free subscription by using a county council library card number, thanks to a nationwide contract backed by the Arts Council.

Oxford web developers White October, who worked on the website, had to tackle some of the complex questions which lexicographers have grappled with over the centuries. Paper dictionary editors have had 150 years to get to grips with homonyms (words spelled the same, but with different meanings), spelling variants, irregular plurals, pronunciation, etc.

Chris Jones, client services director for White October, said: “There is a whole specialism and a history and tradition has built up in how you lay out dictionary entries. Our team was looking at putting it online, and that is a different ball game.

“When you have a paper book, you flick through pages to find a word alphabetically. Online, you have the potential to link with other words, look at more examples and go into greater depth because there is no constraint on space. There are many more ways of allowing people to explore a word,” Mr Jones added.

“The way an entry is displayed is incredibly complex. There are lots of different terms for the different parts of the description and my team had to learn all that.

“The quality of the information OUP has is incredible and they have a high international brand, but they did not have the website that did it justice. The old website was a bit tired and the aim was to refresh it and make it better for mobiles and tablets.”

The other difference from a paper dictionary is that the words are bang up to date. “Since the website went live we will have made 200 changes. And there is plenty more to do," said Ms Pearsall.

The website has French, German, Italian and Spanish dictionaries, with more languages to follow.

Mr Jones says one problem was that German words tend to be longer, causing unforeseen line-breaks.

White October, based in Marston Street, East Oxford, has expanded its workforce from 17 to 27 over the past 18 months.

A team of up to six people worked on the dictionaries website for five months and — after a break to design “an exciting new mobile app” — is now working on a redesign for another Oxford publisher.