I’ve posted before about dictionaries and the huge amount of work that goes into them. Now, you can get involved yourself in a new type of dictionary making – in online video form.

Wordia.com is “the world’s first democratically compiled, multimedia online dictionary” and is made up of videos uploaded by everyone from your average Joe on the street to the illustrator Quentin Blake. The danger is obvious – how do you know the definition offered is true and accurate? Wordia solves this by having the definition of the word from the Collins dictionary in text below the video.

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Probably my favourite of the videos I’ve viewed so far is the vaguely hysterical one from Nikki Grahame, a former Big Brother UK contestant (above). Although won’t help you too much if you want to know the proper definition of the word invention, it is amusingly overwrought.

Currently the site is asking for videos on words related to Refugee Week 2009, which runs from 15 -21 June. Entries include musings from The Archbishop of Canterbury on refuge and Baaba Maal (community). Upload your own video giving a definition of one of the selected words for the week, and you could win a Simple Acts journal.

Whilst it’s just getting off the ground at the moment, wordia.com could really develop into an interesting tool for language learning, especially if it goes global and definitions from different languages are added. Watch this space.