English-English Dictionary

[Alexis]

Pleco has E-C, C-E, C-C, but no E-E. An E-E dictionary would be extremely useful to look up words in C-E entries that the user does not know. Any possibility of releasing an English-English dictionary for Pleco (either free or paid)?

 

[sfrrr]

At first glance, this may seem silly, but some of the translations in the C-E dictionaries are words even I, with 9 years of college and an advanced degree, and many, many years of compulsive reading, don't know. When I DO look these words up, some of them are terms of art or professional terminology and some are arcane synonyms for everyday words. I can't think of any examples right now, though. Sorry.

I probably would look up more of those words if I didn't have to open another program to find out.

Clearly, not an essential feature, but it would be useful.

 

[johnh113]

Dear Sfrrr,

Yes, I agree. Even though I'm a native speaker of English I run across English words in the dictionaries that I don't know. Of course to be useful for those obscure words, the E-E dictionary would need to be fairly comprehensive.

John

 

[mikelove]

This has been brought up a few times before - we could look at doing something based on Wiktionary or Wordnet, but neither of those is a particularly easy database format to work with (at least for Pleco's purposes), so it would be a fair amount of work. I'd be more inclined to do it if and when we add support for looking up English words in the document reader (and support for easier popup reading on Windows Mobile in general) - right now it would only help with English words that you'd explicitly entered in / copied to the Input Field.

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Every time this feature request comes back around I have to put my vote in for it. Too often I wish I could look up English words when I am explaining words and definitions to my English speaking Chinese friends and colleagues, or when I come across a word that is either unfamiliar or I want to know more precisely its meaning. Like Sfrr, I don't like to leave the "Dictionary App" I am currently in to have to go look up a word in another dictionary application that is far inferior to Pleco, only to return back to Pleco a moment later.

 

[koxinga]

I would love this too ! Think also of all the non-native English speaker that are sometimes stumped by a rare word in a definition. I would love to be able to tap on this rare word and have its meaning.

 

[daniel123]

I also need an English dictionary for the same reasons. I agree that this would be most useful to integrate inside Pleco itself, but I think if the effort for Mike, is too big it would be best to use a third party app.

I for example have two English Dictionarys on my WM phone. One complains an English-English and an English-German Dictionry. It can translate any word similar to Pleco's instant access by double selecting/copying it. The other is also an English-German dictionary and it can translate any word via a taskbar icon So I just do one click.

Both work very well together with Pleco. In my opinion nearly as if they were integrated.


Mike, I hope it is o.k. to post the link of my English-English dictionary here:
http://www.slovoed.com/Merriam-Webster/index.html

I am sure their are many more like this.

Hope it helps anybody.