'WordWeb', another dictionary worth looking at

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

As the bulk of my work requires a lot of writing in English, while my native tongue is not English, I naturally have to rely on a lot of dictionaries and thesauruses. That is why I have always been very keen on trying out any dictionary and thesaurus that I can lay my hands on.

The computer is really a boon to those who need to look up words because it makes flipping through pages and squinting over small print things of the past. With electronic computers, all we have to do is type in the word that we have in mind, and the program will give us one or more definitions in return.

A couple of things can be said about today's computer dictionaries. First, more and more of them have a built-in thesaurus as well. Second, they are also increasingly packed with convenient features. To top it all, many good dictionaries are also free, including WordWeb.

And, talking about the Web, it is a truly humongous dictionary with a huge collection of definitions. If you have access to the Internet, you hardly have any excuse to say you do not know what a particular English word means.

As one of the readers of this column e-mailed me some time ago, an excellent Web dictionary is Atomica (www.gurunet.com/us/products/). It is a great tool that will give us the various medical, technology-related or general meanings of a word, in addition to its translation in several languages including Dutch, Arabic, Japanese as well as both simplified and traditional Chinese. However, it requires that you have an always-on connection to the Internet. * Freeware download

WordWeb is a freeware, which means that you can use it and share it with others without having to pay for it. However, as in the case of many free software programs, it is a stripped-down version of a much better version that you have to buy should you be interested in using it. In this case, if you like WordWeb, which I believe you will, you may also become interested in buying the commercial version, WordWeb Pro.

Despite the name, WordWeb is an offline piece of software. It means that you can use it on a PC or notebook without a connection to the Web. WordWeb can be downloaded from wordweb.info/free/.

In my test, it worked well with Microsoft Office XP, WordPad, Notepad and Lotus WordPro. I no longer had WordPerfect installed on my work computer, so unfortunately I was unable to test how it would work on this former king of word processors.

The default hotkey is Ctrl-Alt-W, and we can change it. In Word XP, WordWeb will detect the word we want it to define by finding where the I-beam is -- the vertical line that tells you where the next character that you type will appear. So, for example, if I want to find words with meanings related to the word "example" as I am typing this sentence, all I will have to do is place the I-beam inside the word and then press the hotkey. WordWeb will then give me alternatives such as "model, exemplar, illustration, instance and representative.

In the other word processing programs, however, placing the I- beam inside the word is not enough. We have to highlight the entire word before WordWeb will pick it up and find its meanings for us. * Good, but not perfect

WordWeb, which is now in Version 2.0, has definitions and synonyms for 135,000 words. It handles both the American and British spelling conventions. It recognizes, for example, "flavour" and "flavor", "licence" and "license". If you type in "colour", one of the synonyms it will give you will be "color".

The dictionary also offers list of words that are remotely related to the keyword at various levels, although the labels for the individual lists are not really informative. Its database also contains proper names, such as Marx, Tocqueville and Newton. When I entered "Bush", however, it gave me the two Bush presidents as well as the definitions of "bush". It always changes "Putin" into "put in".

I should say that the definitions are useful only to a certain extent, though. No usage illustration is available. The great thing is that, when we installed WordWeb, it also detected other dictionaries that had already been installed and placed them on the list of its cross-reference materials. So, if I clicked on the X-Ref button in WordWeb, for example, it would give me the list of my other dictionaries -- Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and iFinger. This button would also lead me to Web dictionaries, which would include Encarta.

In addition to a lot of illustrations, there are a couple of things I would like to see in a computer dictionary but do not find in WordWeb. First, as I am still learning the language, I appreciate the multimedia capability of a dictionary that will pronounce the words for me with a click on a button. Second, WordWeb does not give me the other parts of speech of a given word. So, for example, if I enter "innovation", I will not get "innovational", "innovative", "innovator" or "innovativeness". Third, I would like to have a dictionary that allows us to add our own entries. This would give me a one-stop reference source so I would not have to end up using multiple dictionaries when I work.

The commercial version of WordWeb is WordWeb Pro. It offers the facility for wildcard searches so that we can enter ???gance, for example. It also includes straight as well as multiple-word anagrams. The best part is perhaps that we can edit and add its database, which is the capability that I am actually looking for. However, I still have not decided whether I will spend US$18 for this version.

A word of caution, though. A CNET reader commented in his review that this freeware might be a spyware, i.e., a piece of software that has been written to steal information from your computer -- mostly for advertising purposes. I have not been able to confirm this. However, at least this dictionary is not on the list of SpyChecker (www.spychecker.com).