'WordWeb', another dictionary worth looking at<\/p>\n
Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id<\/p>\n
As the bulk of my work requires a lot of writing in English,
\nwhile my native tongue is not English, I naturally have to rely
\non a lot of dictionaries and thesauruses. That is why I have
\nalways been very keen on trying out any dictionary and thesaurus
\nthat I can lay my hands on.<\/p>\n
The computer is really a boon to those who need to look up
\nwords because it makes flipping through pages and squinting over
\nsmall print things of the past. With electronic computers, all we
\nhave to do is type in the word that we have in mind, and the
\nprogram will give us one or more definitions in return.<\/p>\n
A couple of things can be said about today's computer
\ndictionaries. First, more and more of them have a built-in
\nthesaurus as well. Second, they are also increasingly packed with
\nconvenient features. To top it all, many good dictionaries are
\nalso free, including WordWeb.<\/p>\n
And, talking about the Web, it is a truly humongous dictionary
\nwith a huge collection of definitions. If you have access to the
\nInternet, you hardly have any excuse to say you do not know what
\na particular English word means.<\/p>\n
As one of the readers of this column e-mailed me some time
\nago, an excellent Web dictionary is Atomica
\n(www.gurunet.com\/us\/products\/). It is a great tool that will give
\nus the various medical, technology-related or general meanings of
\na word, in addition to its translation in several languages
\nincluding Dutch, Arabic, Japanese as well as both simplified and
\ntraditional Chinese. However, it requires that you have an
\nalways-on connection to the Internet.
\n* Freeware download<\/p>\n
WordWeb is a freeware, which means that you can use it and
\nshare it with others without having to pay for it. However, as in
\nthe case of many free software programs, it is a stripped-down
\nversion of a much better version that you have to buy should you
\nbe interested in using it. In this case, if you like WordWeb,
\nwhich I believe you will, you may also become interested in
\nbuying the commercial version, WordWeb Pro.<\/p>\n
Despite the name, WordWeb is an offline piece of software. It
\nmeans that you can use it on a PC or notebook without a
\nconnection to the Web. WordWeb can be downloaded from
\nwordweb.info\/free\/.<\/p>\n
In my test, it worked well with Microsoft Office XP, WordPad,
\nNotepad and Lotus WordPro. I no longer had WordPerfect installed
\non my work computer, so unfortunately I was unable to test how it
\nwould work on this former king of word processors.<\/p>\n
The default hotkey is Ctrl-Alt-W, and we can change it. In
\nWord XP, WordWeb will detect the word we want it to define by
\nfinding where the I-beam is -- the vertical line that tells you
\nwhere the next character that you type will appear. So, for
\nexample, if I want to find words with meanings related to the
\nword \"example\" as I am typing this sentence, all I will have to
\ndo is place the I-beam inside the word and then press the hotkey.
\nWordWeb will then give me alternatives such as \"model, exemplar,
\nillustration, instance and representative.<\/p>\n
In the other word processing programs, however, placing the I-
\nbeam inside the word is not enough. We have to highlight the
\nentire word before WordWeb will pick it up and find its meanings
\nfor us.
\n* Good, but not perfect<\/p>\n
WordWeb, which is now in Version 2.0, has definitions and
\nsynonyms for 135,000 words. It handles both the American and
\nBritish spelling conventions. It recognizes, for example,
\n\"flavour\" and \"flavor\", \"licence\" and \"license\". If you type in
\n\"colour\", one of the synonyms it will give you will be \"color\".<\/p>\n
The dictionary also offers list of words that are remotely
\nrelated to the keyword at various levels, although the labels for
\nthe individual lists are not really informative. Its database
\nalso contains proper names, such as Marx, Tocqueville and Newton.
\nWhen I entered \"Bush\", however, it gave me the two Bush
\npresidents as well as the definitions of \"bush\". It always
\nchanges \"Putin\" into \"put in\".<\/p>\n
I should say that the definitions are useful only to a certain
\nextent, though. No usage illustration is available. The great
\nthing is that, when we installed WordWeb, it also detected other
\ndictionaries that had already been installed and placed them on
\nthe list of its cross-reference materials. So, if I clicked on
\nthe X-Ref button in WordWeb, for example, it would give me the
\nlist of my other dictionaries -- Random House Webster's
\nUnabridged Dictionary and iFinger. This button would also lead me
\nto Web dictionaries, which would include Encarta.<\/p>\n
In addition to a lot of illustrations, there are a couple of
\nthings I would like to see in a computer dictionary but do not
\nfind in WordWeb. First, as I am still learning the language, I
\nappreciate the multimedia capability of a dictionary that will
\npronounce the words for me with a click on a button. Second,
\nWordWeb does not give me the other parts of speech of a given
\nword. So, for example, if I enter \"innovation\", I will not get
\n\"innovational\", \"innovative\", \"innovator\" or \"innovativeness\".
\nThird, I would like to have a dictionary that allows us to add
\nour own entries. This would give me a one-stop reference source
\nso I would not have to end up using multiple dictionaries when I
\nwork.<\/p>\n
The commercial version of WordWeb is WordWeb Pro. It offers
\nthe facility for wildcard searches so that we can enter ???gance,
\nfor example. It also includes straight as well as multiple-word
\nanagrams. The best part is perhaps that we can edit and add its
\ndatabase, which is the capability that I am actually looking for.
\nHowever, I still have not decided whether I will spend US$18 for
\nthis version.<\/p>\n
A word of caution, though. A CNET reader commented in his
\nreview that this freeware might be a spyware, i.e., a piece of
\nsoftware that has been written to steal information from your
\ncomputer -- mostly for advertising purposes. I have not been able
\nto confirm this. However, at least this dictionary is not on the
\nlist of SpyChecker (www.spychecker.com).<\/p>",
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