As a writer, I often need to look up the meaning of words. Sometimes it’s because I don’t know what a certain word means; other times I need to confirm I’m using a word properly.
Of course, I’ve got dictionaries on my shelf. I’ve even got a monstrous Webster’s Unabridged dictionary from 1978. (It measures 4.5 inches thick.)
But when I’m in the middle of writing, it’s not my preference to haul down a dictionary to look up a word. I’d rather just type in the word-in-question and get the definition immediately.
So that’s been my habit for a number of years.
Up until now, I would go to Dictionary.com, but the site is really annoying. Lots of pop-ups and banner ads.
Now I’m using a better method. It’s called Google.
To look up the definition of a word using Google, all you have to do is use the define: operator.
So, for instance, if you wanted to know the meaning of “sesquipedalian,” you would type in the Google search box:
define:sesquipedalian
You would then get back multiple definitions of the word with all the sources cited.
I find this is a much cleaner, simpler way of looking up words (as compared to Dictionary.com). Give it a try the next time you need an online dictionary.
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7 comments ↓
Woah, that is nice.
That’s cool. Wish I could do the same when looking for synonyms. Thesaurus.com can drive me crazy :o).
Peter Stone put me onto some cool tools from answers.com, including a “1-Click Answers” app… you alt-click any word in any program and get a pop-up dialog with a whole bunch of info.
There’s also Firefox and IE plugins:
http://www.answers.com/main/product_info.jsp
Very handy.
Cool Ryan! Thanks for the tip.
I’m not sure if there are any firefox users here, but it used to have dictionary lookup search built into the browser. Now I’ve ‘bookmarked’ my own definition search that will provide the same result. Create a bookmark for the following url:
“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A%s&aq=f”
I’ve assigned this bookmark the keyword of ‘d’. In the address bar I just type:
d economy
That will return the same result as define:economy at google.
Hope that saves some keystrokes…
Thanks for the tip, Ryan, will try it out on occasion.
By the way, I’m a regular dictionary.com user myself and have their Firefox plug-in installed.
Did you know by paying a mere $19.95/yr (their Premium membership) that you get rid of all the ads there? And the site loads much faster, too.
Take care!
~Marcus
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