zlacker

>>cosmoj+(OP)
The dictionaries the author starts with seem to be the concise dictionaries which are intended to be that way. I don't blame him since the full dictionaries (e.g. OED) are hidden behind paywalls but the full dictionaries are really, really good. The entry for "flash" in the OED for example contains literary examples of the kind the author seems to want, like "red the gaze that flashes desolation". The OED also includes several senses of the word and its etymology.

The OED costs $100/year for US residents or £100/year for everyone else [0] but you can often get access through a library. The San Francisco Public Library has a proxy you can use if you have a library card there [1].

[0]: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-english-dicti...

[1]: http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.sfpl.org

>>Youden+jc
Also I scanned the OED and put it on the Internet Archive so everyone can access it for free and build on it. The whole thing is in the public domain now, at least in the US, though of course not the second and third editions.

>>kragen+Oc
That must have been a gargantuan task..

>>janand+9W1
It took me about a month (thanks to the Archive for lending me the machinery!) but that was mostly because I kept getting distracted by reading the damned thing. If I'd had greater discipline, I would have missed out on a very pleasant month of evenings reading the OED and listening to the Crash Test Dummies, but I probably would have been able to finish in a week, and then I would have been much better prepared for moving out of my house and into a Volkswagen Vanagon.