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It seems that the underlying dictionaries used by the three functions in the title are different. My ultimate question is "Why?"

As an example, I stumbled upon this set of results:

DictionaryLookup["gage"] returns {gage} (it recognizes the word);

WordData["gage"] returns {{"gage", "Noun", "MeasuringInstrument"}, {"gage", "Noun", "Marihuana"}, {"gage", "Verb"}}, though

DictionaryWordQ["gage"] returns False.

It seems that the last function is referencing a different dictionary than the first two (for what it's worth, DictionaryLookup works immediately; WordData loads a database before responding.)

This problem is referenced in this question, but the point of that question is different.

My question: why are there different (English) dictionaries?

GregH
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    For me, there are 2327 words that are in the dictionary but return False with DictionaryQ. Most of them are proper nouns and a lot of inflected forms but also things like "decompiler" or "voicemail". Hmm, hard to tell if this was made on purpose. – halirutan Jun 29 '18 at 04:57
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    You should contact Wolfram Support and share their reply if meaningful. – rhermans Jun 29 '18 at 07:55

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