answer:Oh, sure. I have a lot of dictionaries and consult them frequently. One reason I have so many is that the first one I check may not agree with me. (joke) My main references are the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Webster’s—the big one and also the abbreviated ones—and the American Heritage, 4th edition, but I use numerous others as well. Most commonly it’s a difference in pronunciation—which pronunciation is preferred. Sometimes one will give a first and second pronunciation and another will reverse them; sometimes one source will offer both and the other will list only one. Sometimes it’s hyphenation. Hyphenation is one of the more rapidly evolving traits of words (for example, on-line -> online), so an older dictionary is apt to be less helpful. Definitions should be worded differently because the wording of a definition is proprietary; but there are only so many ways to say something, so there is bound to be overlap. After the first sense of a word, the additional senses are not always in the same order, and the abridged dictionaries do not list nearly so many archaic and obscure senses. I love the dictionaries that give tons of information and all the senses of a word, so I like the big ones best. At times I have seen different accounts of derivation too; for example, some will give Latin as a source and others French, and it does point to a different historic process even though the true origin is Latin. Of course you know that not all words are found in all dictionaries—and that it is possible to form legitimate English words that will not be in any dictionary.