Gone are the days when people went through the tedious process of looking up for a word on a bound dictionary. Electronic dictionaries on PC made the process easier but as usual we wanted more – an anytime, anywhere, instantaneous access to digital dictionaries. Some thought this was just another unreasonable whim of mankind. But as they say “whims and fancies can be a path to creativity and success”. This was proved with the creation of Mobile Dictionaries, its strongest manifestation being iPhone dictionaries.
Many dictionary-related apps have been covered in this blog so far but let me give you an update on WordBook [iTunes Link], an already excellent app which has gone par excellence with the release of its latest 2.0 version. With its rich 150,000 entries you would be scanning through an 1,800 page equivalent content in a jiffy. That’s brilliant, but even its previous 1.1 version had the same feature. So there isn’t anything fresh on that front. However, a new feature in the latest version has the power to give pronunciations and origin of words along with their definition.
Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves and shower praises since there are many dictionary applications out there providing these features. So what is it that sets this dictionary really apart? Is it the anagram window which boasts of an ability to search words whose spelling the user partly knows/remembers? Well not entirely. So what’s cooking?
Look closely at the words DICTIONARY, LINKS, THESAURUS and WEB towards the right hand side of the image above. These are not just mere words but they are links to a one stop destination to all that you could ask off a dictionary.
By default the Dictionary link is active which gives you the pronunciation, definition, and origin of a searched word. Now comes the useful part you can click on LINKS to get the synonym, antonym and attribute of the word. Furthermore, you can click on THESAURUS which gives synonyms in different forms i.e. adjective, noun and verb. If this weren’t enough you can click on WEB so that wordbook directly looks up on the internet to retrieve information on the word you have searched. You can even customize and set your own favorite dictionary site to be searched by wordbook.
This phenomenal linkage of thousands of words equips you with not alone the definition of a word but also provides you with a series of similar words which can be used in different forms and contexts all from one single window. Yeah that’s true a one window access to all your wordy needs. So go ahead and “Quench your thirst for words” through WordBook [iTunes Link] that you can download from the App Store for $7.99.