Google Dictionary

http://www.google.com/dictionary

by chanux • 17 years ago

106 69 17 years ago

psyklic• 17 years ago

I've always typed "define: <word>", but this seems to be superior.

sofal4• 17 years ago

It would be nice if there were a way to get straight to it from a regular search though. It is still more convenient for me (in Firefox) to hit Command+k and type "define:".

Also, it'd be nice if Google could just read my mind instead of me having to laboriously type in search queries.

nfnaaron• 17 years ago

To add any search to the search bar in Firefox:

- install addon Add to Search Bar

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3682

Then right click in the search page's search field and choose "Add to search bar ..."

youngian• 17 years ago

This looks similar to the define: results, but juiced up on steroids. Maybe at some point this will be what you get when you do a define: search?

pvandehaar• 17 years ago

1. open the link

2. right-click on the search box, select "add a keyword for this search"

3. for "keyword: " type "def" , for "name: " type "Google Dictionary Search"

Now in your address bar, type "def uniquity"

While you're at it, replace all your search engines with this method and remove your search box. optional: install tiny-menu, move everything from your navigation-toolbar to your top toolbar, hide navigation-bar.

benhoyt• 17 years ago

That's great! I've usually used answers.com or dictionary.com, but they're slow and cluttered compared to this. Also, answers.com often gives you a Wikipedia entry when you want a simple dictionary definition.

kwamenum86• 17 years ago

This still seems a bit cluttered to me and as usual it doesn't even look like the visual design was given any though below the page header.

minalecs• 17 years ago

how is this cluttered when there is basically one drop down, one text input, and one button. Go to homepage of answers.com and they got a bunch of crap on it.

alexkay• 17 years ago

I'm liking the interface, they even include IPA transcriptions!

I bet this will get most online and many offline dictionaries out of business.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

they even include IPA transcriptions

This is very good, as it will promote learning the International Phonetic Alphabet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

drtse4• 17 years ago

Clean interface and ability to save favorite words, nice but after a few tests i'm not too confident in the quality of the translation (e.g. some related phrases with eng<->ita are just wrong). A good start,btw.

nearestneighbor• 17 years ago

needs audio

est• 17 years ago

the English->Chinese has audio

http://www.google.cn/dictionary?langpair=en|zh-CN&q=news...

compay2• 17 years ago

English <-> Spanish has it too.

arvidj• 17 years ago

I've been using ninjawords[1] for awhile now. Looks like they have pretty similar source material, but ninjawords actually feels much faster.

[1] http://ninjawords.com/

tengkahwee• 17 years ago

It would be great if "define: WORD" returns the definitions. It appears to be more better than Wordnetweb's results.

rajeshrajappan2• 17 years ago

You can actually do that from the Google search box

gojomo• 17 years ago

But, a query of [define:WORD] only shows 'web definitions' for WORD. It doesn't show these new dictionary definitions, and it doesn't even include the handy top-right-header link to dictionary definitions that a normal query does!

compay2• 17 years ago

I hope an Android client is in the works.

rajeshrajappan2• 17 years ago

Now we need an API for this, please!

tfh• 17 years ago

I would be almost useless without API..

eugenejen• 17 years ago

I think you can do the dictionary from Google Language API?

mseebach• 17 years ago

Don't be so hard on yourself, I'm sure a lot of nice people like your regular UI just fine.

elai• 17 years ago

Google's webpages are really easy to scrape. lxml, django & 40 lines later and you have a really nice json formatted data stream

mojuba• 17 years ago

I wish there was Latin too.

mdemare6• 17 years ago

The interface is uniform, but the quality is highly variable. There are some excellent electronics dictionaries on the market, but generally not for free on the web.

mdemare6• 17 years ago

Good dictionaries are hand-compiled by experienced lexicographers. Not Google's strength, to put it mildly.

What Google would be extremely good at is creating corpora for all these languages. An example of an excellent Spanish corpus is the following: http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/x.asp

alecco• 17 years ago

A gringo collecting words for an "Espanol" dictionary. Hilarious.

mdemare6• 17 years ago

A lexicographer should be a native speaker. For a corpus-compiler, there's no reason for such a requirement.

ananthrk• 17 years ago

I have heard about Google using lot of local language expertise for things like validating the ranks for local language search results. So, this might also have been vetted by such a group.

ntoshev• 17 years ago

Good encyclopedias are compiled by experienced... oh wait.

No idea if this specific effort is any good, but Google have done a lot of interesting things with language already.

jacobolus• 17 years ago

Good encyclopedias are written by large numbers of individual contributors with expertise in specialized fields, who barely get paid for their efforts, most of the money from encyclopedias going to pay for the organization, compilation, editing, etc. It turns out that the latter can now be much more effectively decentralized than ever before, and contributors no longer need to be explicitly recruited. (which is certainly not to say that Wikipedia isn’t dramatically different from other encyclopedias)

Dictionaries are still compiled by experienced lexicographers.

* * *

Incidentally, does anyone know of a good online thesaurus, now that thesaurus.com is no longer using decent source material (after being hit with a lawsuit for essentially stealing it). All the ones online seem to use Roget’s II, which is vastly inferior to the original Roget’s.

matt1• 17 years ago

"hackers plural

1. A computer hacker is someone who tries to break into computer systems, especially in order to get secret information.

2. A computer hacker is someone who uses a computer a lot, especially so much that they have no time to do anything else."

http://www.google.com/dictionary?langpair=en%7Cen&q=hack...

I guess we're number two?

Sukotto• 17 years ago

yes. Words are defined by their usage... even if the original meaning was different (or even opposite) to to current usage.

"Hacker" has come to primarily mean #1 ... only a small subset of technical people and academics still use it like #2. Similar to the way "Begs the question" has changed in the last few years to mean "directly leads to us asking".

hexis• 17 years ago

"Words are defined by their usage."

Indeed, definitions are like history. It doesn't always work out the way one might like it to.

CWuestefeld• 17 years ago

Tried the first word that randomly popped into my head.

panoply /p'ænəpli/ Synonyms: noun: armour, armor

Huh? Since when are "panoply" and "armor" synonyms?

bmj• 17 years ago

From dictionary.com:

1. a wide-ranging and impressive array or display: the dazzling panoply of the maharaja's procession; the panoply of European history.

2. a complete suit of armor.

3. a protective covering.

4. full ceremonial attire or paraphernalia; special dress and equipment.

grellas• 17 years ago

The word "panoply" derives from a compound Greek word, "pan" = "all" and "hoply," from the "hoplite" or "armed soldier" of ancient times. Hence, the original idea behind the word is that of being "fully (or heavily) armed."

whitebit• 17 years ago

Contrast this with the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for Hacker, noun:

  1.  One who hacks; one who hoes with a hack.
  2.  That which hacks; an implement for hacking, chopping
      wood, or breaking up earth; a chopper, cleaver; a hoe,
      mattock.
  3a. A person with an enthusiasm for programming or using
      computers as an end in itself. colloq. (orig. U.S.).
  3b. A person who uses his skill with computers to try to
      gain unauthorized access to computer files or
      networks. colloq.

One of the quotations listed under 3b. is also notable:

     1983 Byte May 298/1 ‘Hacker’ seems to have originated at
     MIT. The original German/Yiddish expression referred to
     someone so inept as to make furniture with an axe, but
     somehow the meaning has been twisted so that it now
     generally connotes someone obsessed with programming and
     computers but possessing a fair degree of skill and
     competence.

rabidgnat• 17 years ago

For some test English words, it doesn't look any better than Wiktionary:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pants http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ostensibly

http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&... http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&...

As a plus, Wiktionary lets you download their data :). If Google opens this up, then it could get pretty interesting

furyg32• 17 years ago

I'm learning Dutch, and it's even worse. Really basic, commonly used words aren't there.

Good dictionaries are hard to build. At the same time, the web isn't constrained by space the same way a physical book is, which means that a result should have even more information. You shouldn't accept an online dictionary that gives you only one simple usage of a word.

A good dictionary will list the short & sweet definition, alternative definitions, forms, example usages, pronunciation, history, usages in various situations/jargon, idioms, and word history. This dictionary just points you to a wiki.

mdemare6• 17 years ago

I'm Dutch, and I use the electronic Van Dale Groot Woordenboek (€99). Google will give you wiktionary for the word "slim" ( http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim )

Van Dale gives you this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/381493/van_dale_slim.jpeg

SlyShy• 17 years ago

You could always get this exact functionality by searching for "define: word". But still, I like that they have a wrapper interface now.

For times when my word choice matters greatly I still refer to the Oxford English Dictionary, however. As someone else noted, there's a far cry between Google Dictionary and a hand-compiled one.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&...

This one still needs some work.

polynomial• 17 years ago

All things considered, it could have been a lot worse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo...

tszyn• 17 years ago

It's great that they used definitions from the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary (http://www.antimoon.com/how/cobuild-review.htm). Collins was the pioneer of corpus-based full-sentence definitions back in the 90s. Nowadays, there are better choices for an English learner (e.g. the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English), but COBUILD is still miles ahead of open projects like Wiktionary.

Overall, good news for English learners in the short term, but not so much in the long run (who's going to make dictionaries if you can no longer sell them for money?).

pasbesoin2• 17 years ago

On the off chance, does anyone have recommendations for similar resources in German, French, and/or Spanish?

algorias• 17 years ago

For translations to/from German from/to (English, Spanish, etc), dict.leo.org is pretty decent. Not sure that's what you're looking for.

johndoe77• 17 years ago

Why not http://translate.google.com/

st3fan• 17 years ago

This is pretty cool.. Hope they make a mobile version soon.

raffi• 17 years ago

I recommend taking a look at http://www.wordnik.com. It's a startup launched by an experienced dictionary editor (sorry, Erin, I don't know what else to refer to the profession as:)) and they have an API as well.

hasanove2• 17 years ago

i can't help but wonder, if anyone else except from me was using it for at least last few weeks? otherwise, it means i had breaking news at hands without realizing it :(

litewulf2• 17 years ago

Someone pointed it out to me at least a month ago as well. I'm not sure why it is getting press now...

Maybe this is just the power of marketing? I imagine usage was fairly low before people started talking about it.

hasanove2• 17 years ago

i believe this is because they started including this in some search results and it got attention...

anyway, at least i don't feel bad anymore, thanks :-))

ams6110• 17 years ago

Mac OS X has an excellent dictionary app, highlight any word, and from the app menu select Services -> Look Up in Dictionary. Even works when you're offline :-)

Seems to me this used to be bound to a keyboard shortcut back in the NEXTSTEP OS, though it's possible to add one in the current Mac OS.

nixme• 17 years ago

Or even better: hold down Ctrl-Cmd-D and hover over any word.

Works in Cocoa apps that use native text controls -- Safari, Mail, etc. all work.

brianobush• 17 years ago

no japanese? curious to know why.

j1o1h1n• 17 years ago

日本語わ、むぞかしですね。。。

litewulf2• 17 years ago

日本語は actually.

Pronounced wa, but spelled ha.

dave_au• 17 years ago

I tried "the" first, and then "friend".

It looks like it's generated from statistics plus a language model plus the contents of the web (possibly and/or google books).

If that's the goal it looks like they're doing some great work. If being a dictionary is the goal it looks like there are currently better solutions.

However a) give it a few years and b) if they're able to extract that amount of information from their corpus, just imagine how that could be applied to a search engine - I get the feeling that they're showing their hand a little in their progress on the natural language processing front.

If that's so then I can't wait to see them apply it to search.

mdemare6• 17 years ago

What you're seeing for English is the Collins Cobuild dictionary.

Google Dictionary

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