dictionary

Let’s Hope the Print Oxford English Dictionary Really Dies

“Falling away by tens per cent a year,” the print dictionary market “is just disappearing.” That’s what Oxford University Press’ CEO Nigel Portwood says. And that’s exactly why the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary may be online only. While the company will not stop printing smaller dictionaries yet—which are still fairly popular—the 20-volume,…

This Pocket Dictionary’s Camera Reads All Those Abstruse, Recondite Words For Me

Unichal’s Dixau DX3 digital dictionary saves you all that trouble of typing out words you don’t understand. Instead, it takes a picture of the offending verbiage with a pop-up digital camera and automatically translates it. How efficacious! The Dixau DX3 seems less cumbersome than the Dixau Text Scanner, which required a PC link-up. It also…

Google’s in the Business of Defining Words Now With Google Dictionary

This was kind of inevitable. Google Dictionary, I mean. It’s a straight-up dictionary, yeah, but it has a few pretty Google-y features, like the ability to star words, if you’re real forgetful, and you can search for words in multiple languages. It’s also a fairly stripped interface, unlike a lot of dictionary sites, which is…

“Unfriend” Declared Word of the Year

The New Oxford American Dictionary declared “Unfriend” the word of the year. It beat out hashtag, netbook and sexting, among other nominated words. Oxford defines the verb as: “To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.” I think they should include offline usage, too, like when you stop calling…

Thank You, iPhone Dictionary, That Is Exactly What I Meant to Say

The iPhone dictionary famously doesn’t take kindly to cussing, but here’s a notable exception. This autocorrection takes an insult from the anatomical to the excellently profane, helpfully providing an even more vulgar word in case you need it. [Twitter] https://gizmodo.com/how-to-fix-the-ducking-iphone-puritanism-5103129

$199 Sign Language Translator…OK, Video Dictionary

The Sign Language Translator’s name may be a tad misleading (it doesn’t actually translate anything), but as a pocket ASL video dictionary, it’s a neat enough idea. Featuring a 3,500 word dictionary (more words will be downloadable, we’re promised), this seemingly retrofitted PMP is navigated via stylus. You type in the word that you’d like…

Fanboy Is Now a Real English Word, Says Merriam-Webster

Yes, it’s official: you now can be a fanboy by the power of Grayskull and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which says the word is now part of the English language. They arrive a little late, because the Oxford American Dictionary in Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard running on my Apple iMac 24″ shows it, and…

Save the Trees With Webster’s USB New World Dictionary

To hell with paper—save the trees! Sony has already got us thinking along the right path, and now Centon Electronics is releasing Webster’s New World College dictionary, with 160,000 entries, on a USB flash drive. The perk here is the dictionary will be available on either a 2GB or 4GB flash drive at $42.99 and…

The word (acronym) DVR actually made it into the dictionary. It’s only Merriam-Webster though, the USA Today of dictionaries. [Merriam-Webster]

iRiver M10 and D5 Players Bring Glossy Black Back in Fashion

Set to be revealed at SEK in Korea, the iRiver M10 and D5 both have a glossy black look found in other players like the iRiver Clix 2 (but not in the MPlayer). The M10 will be a navigation-centric device, with a gigantic knob on the right and a DMB tuner, which probably means it’s…

Sharp’s Korean Super Dictionary Doubles as PMP

Sharp’s new RD-CX300 may actually be a pocket dictionary worth buying. While Webster has dominated the market for years, filling our heads with useless, 5+ syllable words, Sharp has finally found the dictionary’s long latent potential: a video player. This “multimedia super dictionary” stores 20GB of useless words, MP3s, MPEG4s and WMVs. Plus, it packs…

Books are Overrated—Electronic Scrabble Dictionary

Who wants to get their fingers all paper-y flipping through a real dictionary when you can just type in atrociously wrong word to this little doodad. This officially licensed Scrabble electronic dictionary can ensure that there are no cheating bastards trying to take you in Scrabble. This device is also capable of building words, but…

Apple OS X’s Built in Dictionary

Hey you guys might know this already, but Brian had no clue, so I’m passing it along. Press and hold Apple+Control+D over any word in a cocoa application (Safari, iChat, Mail etc…) and up pops a handy dandy Dictionary/Thesaurus. You can even move your mouse over any other word on the page and it will…

Maybe Useful 15 Years Ago: Franklin USB Dictionary and Thesaurus

The Franklin USB Dictionary and Thesaurus is a 256MB thumb drive with Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and the Franklin Thesaurus on board. So, if you ever find yourself without an online connection, out of range of a WiFi connection, or without any spellchecking or thesaurus capabilities on your word processor, it might be nice to have a…

Eintech LM-500Series Personal Translator And PMP

“Not man enough to grow a mustache, Zack?” Learn that English phrase and many more with the Eintech LM-500Series personal language tutor and PMP. Not only does this translator/dictionary provide hours and hours of dialogue lessons, conversational english quizzes, and animation dialogue, there’s also the brains of a PMP bolted in. With a 640×480 screen,…

Merriam Webster Dictionary for the iPod

Merriam Webster, along with iPREPpress, has released a pocket dictionary for the iPod which provides you definations of over 40,000 words. Using the iPod’s scroll wheel users can search for words through a hierarchical menu and hyper-linked structure. Imagine! You can listen to your favorite tunes while discovering new words. Expect a wide range of…

Take That, Tower Of Babel!

Casio s XD-ST6200 hopes to make international travel a little easier to understand. This electronic dictionary includes text-to-speech capabilities for six languages: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Chinese. True-voice technology lets users listen to entries from the Genius English-Japanese dictionary as spoken by a native speaker. Other built-in dictionaries include the Nikkei personal computer…

Sharp PW-N8000 Color Dictionary

At first thought, a color dictionary seems about as useful as a deer carcass to a vegan chef. In my usual fashion, after further investigation this device proved to be a bit more useful than I initially thought. This device features the Encyclopaedia Britannica with pictures that are viewed on a 4.3″ 480×272 screen. There…