[HN Gopher] Why I built a dictionary app
___________________________________________________________________
Why I built a dictionary app
Author : zehfernandes
Score : 486 points
Date : 2022-08-01 00:46 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wordnote.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wordnote.app)
| cal85 wrote:
| This looks great, congratulations to the author. I will be using
| it.
|
| In case you've never read it, this 2014 blog post is an all time
| favourite of mine. It really opened up my thinking about words
| and definitions:
|
| _You're probably using the wrong dictionary_ -
| http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary
|
| Ever since reading that, I have tended to use the 1913 Webster's
| as my primary dictionary, supplemented by various modern ones
| where necessary. I found an acceptable iOS app for it - the UI is
| not good, but at least it has those shimmering definitions.
|
| My dream would be if you could make a version of Wordnote that
| uses 1913 Webster's as a dataset.
| kworks wrote:
| James Somer's excellent blog post (and mcphee-draft-no-4)
| provoked a fundamental shift in the way I rewrite. Can't
| understate its effect. Not the least of which is that I now
| turn to the 1913 Webster's several times a day.
|
| Agreed that the UI on the present iOS app is less than ideal.
| That said easy mobile access to those sublime definitions is
| super helpful. Gratitude to the dev.
|
| Will definitely be using Wordnote (great work!) and I echo the
| wish that the 1913 Webster's be incorporated somehow.
| cal85 wrote:
| > Agreed that the UI on the present iOS app is less than
| ideal.
|
| Which one do you use? I think there might be a few that use
| 1913 Webster's. I use this one [1]. It could be a lot better,
| but it works.
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/websters-writers-
| dictionary/id...
| kworks wrote:
| Yes that's the one I use. Totally functional but agreed it
| could be better. Grateful for the app all the same.
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Wow, that blog post is fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
|
| For those who haven't read the blog post yet, it also includes
| an archive.org link to the out-of-copyright 1913 Websters, and
| ways to install it on Mac, iPhone, Android, and Kindle.
|
| Where the blog post compares the very different definitions of
| "pathos" in 1913 Webster's & 2010 New Oxford American, I'm
| reminded of Orwell's "Principles Of Newspeak" appendix at the
| end of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The appendix imagines how the
| definitions of words kept being further narrowed until the
| final Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary, to diminish
| the range of possible thought.
| nomilk wrote:
| When I hear/see a new word I write it in a google doc along with
| it's definition (from www.tfd.com/<word>) and reference to where
| I came across it (e.g. a quote or link to youtube video).
|
| The doc has a short and distinct name so can quickly be accessed
| via command + L (to go to address bar) and the distinct 5
| character name for chrome to auto suggest it.
|
| It's now ~10 years old. I used to add to it often, but the pace
| slowed as my vocabulary grew. It contains around 1-2000 words. I
| occasionally review it. One day I'll parse/analyse it.
| c120 wrote:
| Some feedback: I'd welcome a way of de-selecting the English
| dictionary.
|
| Currently trying to learn Spanish and having to select Spanish as
| the language for each word makes the app a pain to work with.
| lowatt wrote:
| Nice app. Keep every word queried in a list and revisit them to
| enhance memory. This is exactly the same way I expanded my
| English vocabulary 10 years ago.
|
| My simplistic solution was a command-line script which googles
| "define {word}" and extracts the definition into the console. The
| query history is appended to a text file (partitioned by date)
| saved in Dropbox.
|
| Someone tried to use it in an Alfred workflow. Don't know if they
| made it or not. It seems it's hard to query google in a script
| now.
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| Looking up unknown words during reading is not very effective for
| gaining understanding of a foreign language. My personal habit is
| to look up words only if I can remember having wondered about its
| meaning for at least five times.
| jobigoud wrote:
| The two techniques, intensive or extensive reading, are
| valuable. Usually I lookup every word during the first few
| chapters of a book, to make sure I have a solid base for the
| story, then only lookup words that I've seen many times before.
| felipelalli wrote:
| Congratulations.
| bcopa wrote:
| Ahhh I love this idea! I thought of something similar back in
| 2020. Can't wait to test it :)
| bcopa wrote:
| Also the design is beautiful!!
| [deleted]
| spicyramen_ wrote:
| jiggunjer wrote:
| I hate typing on mobiles, so wouldn't it be cool if the app could
| use the camera to look at the text and just tap to
| highlight/lookup a word?
|
| Voice lookups might also be a good thing.
| steinso wrote:
| Great idea! Turns out, this already works natively on iPhones
| already from the camera.
| Tildey wrote:
| More recent iPhones can do OCR into (any?) text fields - hold
| on the text field and select "scan text" or the little box with
| some horizontal lines in it. It's not perfect for some things
| (underscores and more unusual punctuation) but it's usually
| correct
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I have always used WordWeb (https://wordweb.info) and I'm yet to
| find something better (and simpler) either on desktop or mobile.
| It gives me pronunciations using sounds from commonly spoken
| words. Sound. Offline support. Multiple dictionaries. Multiple
| language combos if I want it.
|
| It's my most favourite and most useful dictionary, only second to
| the Oxford pocket dictionary I owned as a child and later as a
| teenager while I learnt English as my second language.
| mprovost wrote:
| > So I created a script to download the definitions of the most
| 300.000 common words in English and insert them into an SQLite
| database.
|
| It seems like if you're limiting yourself to 300k words starting
| with the most common ones isn't the best heuristic for filtering.
| Surely people are going to look up less common words more often?
| Or maybe even the most likely words to be misspelled.
| arooaroo wrote:
| This is bring back a lot of memories - in a former life I took
| care of digital products for dictionaries at Pearson Longman, and
| one of my favourite projects was developing a generic
| dictionaries platform for iOS apps, that allowed me to produce
| about eight dictionary apps published on the app store. All long
| gone now - no trace of them which is a shame.
|
| The Longman brand was associated with English as a second
| language, so all our digital products came with audio
| pronunciations, plus a lot of photos/illustrations. In some
| products we also had a simple quiz engine to test comprehension.
| So a lot of data to cram into each app.
|
| Like now, it seems that SQLite does a lot of heavy lifting. A lot
| of time was spent making a pipeline that could get lexicographic
| material in to a searchable database, plus the associated sound
| and image assets. I recall that the SQLite lib built-in to iOS
| wasn't good enough, so I had to compile my own build and bundle
| within each app.
|
| The Longman dictionary data was really good. At the time a lot of
| the free dictionary apps were using WordNet (which isn't even a
| typical dictionary) because wikitionary wasn't where is it now. I
| bet there are more avenues to acquire decent, free, lexical
| resources.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| While iOS comes with high quality, built-in dictionaries, it
| still lacks an app.
|
| Since the dictionary works as a pop-up on any selectable text,
| then if I look up a word and there's a "see other word", there is
| no way to jump to the next word. If the definition contains a
| word I don't understand, there is no way to click through to that
| word.
|
| This is the dictionary I'd like to see on my phone.
| dombili wrote:
| Exactly and I don't know why dictionary apps don't take
| advantage of it. I wonder if it's against App Store guidelines
| to make a dictionary app based on the built-in dictionary.
|
| There are a lot of dictionary apps out there but I think most
| developers miss the forest for the trees. I don't know why
| there's still not a single dictionary app that is blazing fast,
| use the built-in dictionary and have some common sense design
| choices (literally not came across a single dictionary app that
| doesn't enable keyboard as soon as you open it -- it's a
| dictionary app, why do they think I open the app?!).
|
| Kotoba (https://github.com/willhains/Kotoba) is almost perfect
| but there's no way to download it from the App Store and I
| don't want to deal with the hassle of sideloading on iOS as a
| non-developer.
| tawfiqh wrote:
| Yep! Kotoba is quick and easy to use.
|
| It has the added benefit of being integrated with the system
| dictionary, so if you add any extra dictionaries to the
| system, such as foreign languages, they will also be
| immediately supported in Kotoba.
|
| Unfortunately: "App Store guidelines disallow using the
| built-in system dictionary to create a dictionary app"
|
| Write up on daring fireball here:
| https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/06/19/kotoba
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > I promise I didn't have my expectations too high, I only had a
| few core principles
|
| Proceeds to list 6 pretty high requirements.
|
| The author's not wrong, those are good requirements, but not to
| be expected from any standard app these days.
|
| To dig on the first: " Offline support", this in itself requires
| a lot of work.
|
| Going the technically easy way will often go in direct opposite
| to your business model (mobile ads or access info sales). Going
| for subscriptions or other mechanisms will have you do harder
| technical solutions, making that specific innocent requirement a
| decently high hurdle.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Why not just charge for the app itself, instead of trying to
| place ads or charge for subscriptions?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Yes, this is of course one of the saner options. It brings a
| few issues down the line if you intend to have a server
| component for synching, or plan to maintain the app for a
| long enough time and/or expand its features etc, as paid
| upgrades are a PITA in iOS. But it could make sense.
| Jataman606 wrote:
| > To dig on the first: " Offline support", this in itself
| requires a lot of work
|
| What work are you talking about? How is accessing local
| filesystem more work than calling external API with
| authorization?
| curo wrote:
| Nice UX! I imagine I'd prefer your app since it gives me a
| constant feedback loop with the writing process (vs the select to
| look up native UX). I've downloaded it and will give it a try.
|
| Just fyi, "Donwload" at the bottom is a typo. Figured as a
| dictionary app, you'd want someone to flag that
| csomar wrote:
| A bit unrelated but, I tried to search for this app on the
| AppStore. Typing "wordnote" returns it in the 30-40 results. This
| is despite the fact that there is no other app named wordnote or
| a derivative of that.
| zehfernandes wrote:
| Yes, this is very weird. I think Apple Store is not given a
| proper rank because it's a new app.
|
| You must write the full name "Wordnote Dictionary" to find it.
| johnqian wrote:
| I really like the idea of making the main input a saveable
| textarea that can hold multiple words rather than just one.
| Reminds me of Numi and Soulver, which do this for calculators (I
| never went back to a traditional calculator app after discovering
| them). I wonder if there's other apps that could be made more
| powerful by replacing the single-input with a textarea.
| dssagar93 wrote:
| Well,
| lbqjfw wrote:
| Congratulations! Cool app and nice writeup.
|
| Related: what do people use for bilingual (translation)
| dictionaries (i.e. X-English or English-X)? Most of the apps I
| have found for the languages I use are full of ads and not very
| usable. (Translation apps like Google Translate are much better
| and more usable, but there are some use-cases where a dictionary
| really is better).
| edwcross wrote:
| QuickDic (from F-Droid, with offline dictionaries) works for
| me.
| keyboard_smash wrote:
| For European languages (at least French and Spanish),
| WordReference is pretty good. For everything else, Wiktionary's
| a really good resource!
| lysium wrote:
| I use dict.cc. (Both the website and the app.) Works offline.
| dssagar93 wrote:
| Well, I am preparing for IELTS and last weekend I was looking for
| an API to build a dictionary web app with a great UX, UI and
| accessibility. Thanks. I'll definitely try this one.
| dangom wrote:
| Looks very pretty indeed. Will give it a spin.
|
| For those interested in alternative dictionary apps for the
| English language I'd also recommend checking out the advanced
| english dictionary [1] as well. It certainly checks all the boxes
| the author asked for and then some more.
|
| EDIT: Just noticed the author was kind enough to share the source
| code. That's super cool - kudos for doing that.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/advanced-english-dictionary/id...
| ghewgill wrote:
| Great execution, I like the "always-on" dictionary definition
| panel.
|
| I built an offline mobile dictionary app about 10 years ago for a
| language where there was no existing app - New Zealand Sign
| Language. Fortunately, the dictionary work had already been done
| by the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Victoria University of
| Wellington [1]. They kindly gave permission for me to use the
| dictionary data (and images for every entry, because it's a
| visual language). As a result they properly licensed the
| dictionary data as CC-BY-NC-SA, so anybody can use it now.
|
| All the dictionary entries and images were built in to the
| initial download of the app. This was a bit amusing in 2012 when
| there were still 50 MB app download size limits, I had to
| sacrifice some image quality (converting PNG to JPEG, among other
| things) to get the file size small enough. I had always intended
| to add an optional download of all the sign videos, but never did
| get around to it, and online on-demand access to the videos
| always seemed to work well enough for users. (My #1 user is my
| wife, I built this app at the start of her studies and she is now
| a qualified NZSL interpreter and still uses the app every day.)
|
| Since then, the DSRU has done a lot of work on the online
| dictionary web site [2], and I have passed on the responsiblity
| of app maintenance onto them. All their work (website, apps,
| conversion scripts) is now open source [3].
|
| 1: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/centres-and-institutes/dsru
|
| 2: https://www.nzsl.nz/
|
| 3. https://github.com/ODNZSL
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Beautifully done! Kudos for the concept and the application of
| it.
|
| Flashcards is such a natural extension for such an app and I had
| just pitched flashcards to someone asking me for ideas for a new
| Dictionary app for Math. Thank you for the validation haha
|
| Do look into one app I especially like called Memorize on iOS
| using flashcards very effectively for vocab learning.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/in/app/memorize-learn-sat-vocabulary/...
| mourner wrote:
| For me as a non-native speaker who had this problem too, reading
| on Kindle helped learn the language immensely. You can long-press
| any word and it will show results from a high-quality dictionary
| (there are few to choose from, including the Oxford dictionary)
| -- offline, and without putting the book away, which would be a
| deal breaker for me. It will also remember all the words you look
| up so that you can practice later.
| hda111 wrote:
| I like the app but why can't I copy text from my notebook? Not
| even the system-wide gesture from iOS (three finger tap) works.
| xtreak29 wrote:
| I too wrote a similar app for my personal problem and also served
| to be a good way to learn about kotlin and Android ecosystem. I
| also tried a rewrite in flutter and compose. The idea was to use
| select the word and then click meaning from context menu so that
| meaning occurs as notification and disappears in 15 seconds. I
| used Wiktionary as dataset source and app works offline.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xtreak.not...
|
| https://github.com/tirkarthi/NotificationDictionary
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| > I also tried a rewrite in flutter
|
| Tried? Mind elaborating? I'm working on a flutter app atm - do
| you mean it didn't work out? / you didn't end up liking
| flutter?
| xtreak29 wrote:
| I used rewriting as a learning experience. I found flutter to
| be simpler with respect to UI and state management compared
| to using XML by default for UI. Since mine was a crud app
| flutter was okay. I later found jetpack compose which has
| flutter like UI composition and I liked it better since I can
| access the existing Android library ecosystem too.
| zehfernandes wrote:
| Hey @xtreak29, that's awesome. I wish had found your repo
| sooner and use your wikidictionary parser tool, so good. Thanks
| for sharing.
|
| I loved that you built the context menu it's something I was
| thinking to. Congratulations.
| billyzs wrote:
| wanted a dictionary app that tracks the words I looked up too.
| ended up writing an iOS short that queries an online dictionary
| and posts the word to an ifttt webhook which then adds the word
| to an airtable. with a bit of manual work, the card view in
| Airtable can even function as a rudimentary flash card. it's
| pretty basic and never going to have fancy features such as
| spaced repetition, but hey not bad for not writing a single line
| of code
| sammy2244 wrote:
| [deleted]
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > I was worried about the speed of react-native querying a 21MB
| SQLite database.
|
| I often have similar concerns when writing code. Then I remember
| that "normal" applications send the query over the network to
| another continent, where a server has to query a HUGE database,
| and relay the result back.
|
| It's amazing how we have such powerful devices, but are so
| accustomed to underestimating their capacity.
| srad1292 wrote:
| I recently hit the same wall of finding good, freely-available
| dictionary data. My family and I like to play Quiddler here and
| there(where you get cards and build words with them) and I wanted
| to make a Quiddler solver that would take your hand/top card in
| discard and would give you a list of the best combination of
| words by total points, by word length with points as a sub sort,
| and by number of words with points as a sub sort. I found
| multiple sources of JSON data with inconsistent formatting or
| missing information. I mainly wanted the list of words and what
| the word type of each definition was so I could quickly filter
| out words that didn't have a whitelisted type. I ended up
| settling with just a Scrabble dictionary which was a list of
| strings and manually removing words here and there as they came
| up if they didn't belong. Understandable that the big names in
| dictionaries spent a lot of resources getting to where they are.
| That said, it's hard to believe something as fundamental as a
| record of our language doesn't have an open source and well-
| organized dataset accessible by API or download.
| lingdocs wrote:
| This is really cool. Glad to see people are wanting and working
| for better dictionaries. I also had a similar thoughts while
| trying to create a Pashto dictionary a few years ago. It needs to
| be offline, fuzzy-search as you type, etc. But sooo many
| dictionaries out there work in more clumsy ways. I decided to
| build a PWA one from scratch using React and a LokiJS in-memory
| database. Later on I added a verb conjugation and phrase
| generation engine (big thanks to phrase structure analysis and
| TypeScript!)
|
| You can see a little demo of it here - I'm planning on open
| sourcing the core soon.
|
| Demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMpSpaMMdp4
|
| Dictionary https://dictionary.lingdocs.com
| jxdxbx wrote:
| I've been looking for a GOOD dictionary app that works with
| StarDict files for years. I am not interested in the crummy free
| internet dictionaries that people use when I've got the complete
| OED. (The actual OED, not some random dictionary that has
| "Oxford" in its name).
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Nicely done.
|
| It seems to put the "transitive verb" definition at the top,
| followed by the noun, even if the verb-usage is less common. Is
| there metadata that indicates which is more common, to adjust the
| order?
| brd529 wrote:
| I also noticed this - e.g 'wheel' - I assume noun first would
| be a better default but haven't thought about it deeply
| pratap103 wrote:
| I'm reading 'Love in the Time of Cholera' atm and was literally
| too afraid to look up words for fear of distraction. I can't wait
| to use flashcards! A favorites section might be a cool feature -
| for words you want to start working into conversations
| svnpenn wrote:
| typo:
|
| > Not really the invetor of the dictionary but the well famous
| for combine alphabetic and topic order
| engintekin wrote:
| I also started a similar project, using Princeton's Wordnet. Also
| integrated with youglish for pronunciation
| https://www.onevocab.com/definition/endeavor.
| liquidise wrote:
| Well this is... eerie. I just released Stictionary[1] on Friday.
|
| It is an offline, ad free, dictionary that remembers words you
| look up. It gives a word of the day and provides (admittedly
| underfeatured atm) flashcards to review your word lists. It
| includes optional syncing to keep your word lists across devices.
| I've been holding off posting about it while i complete the
| website[2].
|
| Love to see someone else had such a similar idea. Great
| confirmation of the unmet need in the space. Really awesome
| execution as well. Congrats on the launch!
|
| On a personal note, i built Stictionary after tracking all the
| words i looked up manually for years. Now i have an app that does
| it for me (and was a blast to build).
|
| 1:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stictionary/id1613214660?platf...
|
| 2: https://www.stictionary.com/
| vxNsr wrote:
| Your website is horrifically mangled on my iPhone 12 Pro iOS
| v15.5
|
| https://i.imgur.com/hXriy52.gif
| liquidise wrote:
| Yeah, mobile is brutal right now. The website is incomplete
| by every measure and i've been experimenting with a dekstop
| concept so far. I'll post a proper Show HN this week once the
| website is complete and i am on the play store!
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Why does Apple App Store say your app is 4 years old if you
| just released it this past week?
|
| Same goes for the OP?
| DecayingOrganic wrote:
| That is the App Store's age rating, not the actual age of the
| app.
| ace2358 wrote:
| Excellent work, just downloaded it, thanks.
|
| Apps that work offline are my favourite as even though I have
| 4g and wifi, these connections can sometimes be slow or just
| down and it's sad seeing apps just not work in those scenarios.
|
| Edit: I know you said it's not finished, but that website is
| impressively broken!
| rsaz wrote:
| App looks amazing, I didn't know I wanted this but can see
| myself using it a ton now that I do.
|
| By the way, you may be aware but there's a typo in the iOS app
| in the "Your Words" tab when your list is empty.
|
| > You can swipe words off your list later if [you] add a word
| you'd rather not see.
| noyesno wrote:
| Fantastic tool, thank you! Any chance you could include usage
| in a sentence for each word? As a non-native speaker, sometimes
| it is not obvious from the description on how the word is
| typically used.
| prawn wrote:
| It's very stupid, but I check dictionary definitions in an
| incognito window because I'm horrified of someday people coming
| across my browser history and thinking "Wow, he didn't know the
| definition of _that_?! What an idiot! " The idea of a
| dictionary that tracks my searches horrifies me in a silly way.
| Ha!
| vxNsr wrote:
| Consider this very popular hn link:
| http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary it gets posted once a year
| at least and strongly recommends looking up words you already
| know.
| StillLrning123 wrote:
| I look up words all the time. Etymology is fun. I use several
| languages though, so I often get confused about nuances and
| subtleties.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I look up everything in an incognito window!
|
| But for dictionary/thesaurus I usually use spotlight to
| access MacOS' built-in resources, which is faster.
| uhhyeahdude wrote:
| Me too, it's the most low-key killer feature of the OS imo.
| I use it automatically just to check my assumptions most
| most of the time; it's just so easy and easily ingrained.
| dionidium wrote:
| I look up words for which I already know the primary
| definition all the time. Sometimes it's just to confirm that
| it doesn't mean something subtly different than I remember.
| Sometimes it's to find alternate/secondary uses. Sometimes
| it's to confirm spelling. Sometimes it's a jumping off point
| for synonyms or related words. I wouldn't assume you were
| totally unfamiliar with a word just because you looked it up.
| mathieuh wrote:
| I do this all the time to look up pronunciations. I'm
| interested in linguistics so I taught myself IPA, and with
| things like stress being pretty unpredictable in English,
| while I might know the meaning of a word I like to make
| sure I'm pronouncing it correctly
| blowski wrote:
| I'm amazed how often I "know" the primary definition, only
| to discover I'm wrong when I look in a dictionary. Same
| with pronunciation of words I've only seen written.
| donkeyd wrote:
| > Same with pronunciation of words I've only seen
| written.
|
| I had the opposite experience when visiting the US for
| the first time. I saw a bag of 'luh-too-che' in the
| store. For about 10 second my mind was wondering what it
| was. Then I realized that the word that is (to my Dutch
| brain) pronounced as 'ledice' is not spelled that way,
| it's spelled 'lettuce'. I came to the US with C2 level
| proficiency (thanks to subtitled media and MMORPGs), but
| I still had a lot to learn!
| prawn wrote:
| Honestly, 99% of the time that's what I'm doing too. I'm
| pretty sure I'm using it correctly, but want to double-
| check before embarrassing myself in front of all of 10
| people still on Twitter.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Somewhat related: https://xkcd.com/1053/
| jrimbault wrote:
| I also do that but when I know I won't come back later for
| it. I use my history as shortcuts, so I avoid cluttering it
| with random word lookups.
| rags2riches wrote:
| Looking up words is not stupid. Misusing words because you
| assume you know what they mean, that is stupid.
| jafo wrote:
| > Looking up words is not stupid.
|
| That's for the ML algorithms to decide.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Misusing words because you assume you know what they
| mean, that is stupid.
|
| But if you're sure you know what it means (albeit
| incorrectly), because that's what you've picked up or been
| taught and no-one has ever corrected or queried you, where
| would the impetus to look it up in a dictionary come from?
|
| You might have a case for "deliberately misusing words
| [...] is stupid" but there's a long comedic and literary
| tradition there...
| uhhyeahdude wrote:
| I suppose you could look at it that way. I certainly did,
| and it has taken me a very (stupid) long time come to a
| slightly different understanding. Not saying it is better
| necessarily. I just find it closer to true more of the time
| in my life.
|
| Misusing words may or may not be stupid--without more
| information, including some nebulous stuff about intent and
| interpretation, I have no way of saying for sure in a given
| encounter.
|
| What I would say instead is that many people seem to see
| "misuses words because [cocky/pretentious/know-it-
| all/careless]" as a heuristic for stupid. It isn't a great
| heuristic, but knowing that people use it to rank you and
| choosing speech accordingly...isn't stupid.
| HHest wrote:
| I think this is also a mechanism for languages to evolve:
| for whatever reason people start using a word differently
| from the dictionary definition. After a while if it has
| enough support the new usage gets added in. Sometimes the
| new way can be so entrenched that the old definition
| becomes archaic.
| jobigoud wrote:
| > Great confirmation of the unmet need in the space.
|
| Hmmm, I've been using a dictionary app for years that is
| offline, ad-free, remembers words you look up, and has a word
| of the day feature. Also has favorites and you can add personal
| notes on entries. It's also free. It's based on Wictionary. I
| use the ones for Spanish and Portuguese but I think they have
| versions for many languages. The name is fairly generic
| "Spanish Dictionary - Offline" by Livio.
| kawera wrote:
| Those dictionaries are fantastic, I've also been using them
| for years.
|
| Adding to the long list of features,... full verb conjugation
| tables and audio for most words.
| anonymous344 wrote:
| loooks good when in google play?
| devindotcom wrote:
| I've also tracked a lot of words I have needed to look up, but
| made little posts out of the interesting ones. Of course, I
| immediately forget all these definitions, but that just makes
| it fun to go back through them.
|
| https://coldewey.cc/tag/vocabulary/
| A_Venom_Roll wrote:
| Sorting the definitions by length is a nice touch. What's
| with the different 'editions'? I thought that they were
| grouped by perhaps subject or book, but can't figure out what
| for instance WRITHEN SHINE EDITION exactly represents.
| tartoran wrote:
| Just what I wanted for years but gave up and wrote words on
| pieces of paper that eventually get lost.
|
| Great execution, thanks for sharing it with the world
| podviaznikov wrote:
| Great list of features! I was thinking of building exactly the
| same app few years ago. So agree with your statement that it is
| all verification of "unmet need in the space"
| SCAQTony wrote:
| I would pay for a dictionary with word derivations in it so I can
| better learn word structures. Built in dictionary apps generally
| lack that option.
| podunkPDX wrote:
| http://etymonline.com, maybe?
| nbzso wrote:
| Nice tool. I would like to announce our movement. It is called
| "Life without a smartphone". We are the minority of today. We
| love to use real computers and open web for our daily work and
| avoid using smartphones, data silos and user hostile products.
|
| Our "extreme" view is that no amount of optimization and local
| storage will save your mind from dark patterns of your
| smartphone.
|
| P.S. We love to be downvoted to oblivion on HN. Thanks.:)
| ourmandave wrote:
| Do you have an app I can download to learn more?
| nbzso wrote:
| Yep. It is called "Get a life" and is available for free
| outside all app stores:)
| vthommeret wrote:
| I saw a few posts discuss using the Wiktionary dump directly vs.
| the freeDictionary API, which is difficult to do because the raw
| wiki text isn't immediately usable. I actually created and open
| sourced a project several years ago that I never publicized that
| lexes and parses the Wiktionary dump:
|
| https://github.com/vthommeret/glossterm
|
| Specifically it can understand and execute 21 different wiki text
| templates (e.g. "cog", "borrow", "gloss", "prefix", "qualifier"),
| e.g. {{inh|es|la|gelatus}}:
|
| https://github.com/vthommeret/glossterm/tree/master/lib/tpl
|
| And eventually parse it into this structure, which has a list of
| all definitions (distinguished into nouns, adjectives, verbs,
| adverbs, etc...), etymology, links, and descendants for a given
| word:
|
| https://github.com/vthommeret/glossterm/blob/master/lib/gt/p...
|
| Further parts of the pipeline turned different relationships into
| edges that I could stick into a graph database and do certain
| graph queries. This allowed me to do certain queries like find
| French, Spanish, and English words that share a Latin root.
|
| I ended up parallelizing this specific query using Apache Beam
| and then dumping the results into Firestore so they could be
| queried via a web app. Here's an example for the Spanish word:
| helado
|
| https://cognate.app/words/es/helado
|
| Under the "Cognates" section, it knows that it comes from the
| Latin root "gelatus" from which English has borrowed the word
| "gelato".
|
| I originally started this project when I was learning Spanish. If
| you just look up the definition of helado (ice cream) it doesn't
| necessarily help you learn it. But I found that if I could relate
| it to languages I already knew (e.g. English and French), it was
| easier to remember. In this case helado is related to gelato, but
| you won't find that in e.g. Google Translate or SpanishDict.
|
| Ultimately, I found that while the Wiktionary data is amazing,
| it's also a bit of a quagmire for finding cognates. I would miss
| certain etymologies where you had to follow a descendant tree 2
| or 3 levels deep. Or a definition would just mention a word it
| was related to. But if I expanded the query to include these
| instances, then it significantly increased the amount of non-
| cognates that showed up in the results.
|
| So I created a useful set of tools (which I never wrote about
| until now), but I realized the end result of a web UI that showed
| the relationships between words would require a significant
| investment in data quality that likely wasn't possible without
| changing Wiktionary itself / community investment.
| achempion wrote:
| Great work
|
| I'm working on similar dictionary app and found wiktionary
| insanely usable as dictionary source.
|
| Here is one more project aiming to make wiktionary data usable
| as json data structure:
| https://github.com/tatuylonen/wiktextract.
|
| It has a link to a site https://kaikki.org/ which hosts
| dictionary data dumps.
| vthommeret wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah I've seen a few similar projects (particularly
| written Java which I wasn't excited about). That looks like a
| nice project. It's written in Python and says it can take
| from an hour to several days depending on the computer and
| they don't recommend running it on a Mac.
|
| I don't have up-to-date benchmarks but my project is written
| in Go and everything was designed to be as highly parallel as
| possible, broken up into multiple pipeline steps (splitting
| the Wiktionary dump, lexing, parsing, resolving, etc...) with
| a high emphasis on performance so I would assume it's faster
| but would need to do a head-to-head test.
| addled wrote:
| While we are talking about dictionaries, I really wish more word
| games would include definitions. My kids (well, me as well)
| really enjoy word games like Bookworm Adventures, Wordscapes,
| etc. However occasionally these turn into random guessing of
| letters until something is accepted.
|
| It would be really neat (and educational) to have the option to
| view a word's definition after you play it.
| hank_z wrote:
| Eudic is a dictionary app that has all the features you wanted.
| It has clients across all platforms. I have been using it for
| many years and it works like a charm.
| dareiff wrote:
| Congratulations! Super cool. One of the first applications I was
| blown away by, for many different reasons, was OmniDictionary <ht
| tps://web.archive.org/web/20050310043334/http://www.omnigr...>.
| It was something that I couldn't imagine existing, but did, and
| it was one of the first apps the company I worked for at the time
| had created. (It relied on a server!? This was an ENTIRE app?)
|
| It used a DICT server for lookups:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DICT
|
| And 14 years ago, some servers still existed. They're hard to
| find now.
|
| It always struck me as something fantastic to a) learn how to
| interface with a server b) learn cocoa/objective-c/etc c)
| redesign a simple app (https://www.omnigroup.com/assets/img/app/g
| raffle-7/mac/full-...). Something you've just described in
| detail. Well, most of it.
| cauliturtle wrote:
| I cannot download it from my HK app store account.
| raytube wrote:
| So I read this as, I got a dataset to query and got it running
| locally via sqllite. But it was a limited dataset so I want to
| write my own dictionary.
|
| A - aardvark...
| _ache_ wrote:
| I did the same but not in an app. On a cli application. And I
| added a web interface too.
|
| Work's pretty well. I use it every day. It's only in french.
|
| https://git.ache.one/dfr/about/
|
| The web version:
|
| https://dico.ache.one/
|
| (My use case was that I need pronunciation of the words)
| kccqzy wrote:
| Actually, iOS already has built-in support for dictionary and
| thesaurus. In any native text input field, select a word and
| choose Define or Look Up. The choice of dictionary is
| customizable; I usually choose New Oxford American Dictionary and
| Oxford Dictionary of English (not to be confused with the
| venerable Oxford English Dictionary). They are high quality
| dictionaries. They are basically the same except that the
| pronunciation for the latter is in IPA which I'm more used to.
|
| When I need to look up a word, I create a new note from control
| center, type in the word, double tap to bring up the contextual
| menu and then the dictionary.
|
| It pretty much checks all the boxes. For distraction-free
| reading, turn off "Content from Apple" in the Siri settings to
| avoid those obnoxious Siri knowledge panels.
| [deleted]
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| I agree, the solution is the Apple-native feature: highlighting
| a word and selecting "Look Up."
| glacials wrote:
| Not sure if I'm missing something about this method, but in
| many apps you can long-press the word directly to get the
| context menu with "Look Up", without having to type the word
| into a note.
| bearmode wrote:
| The use case here is to look up a word whilst reading a book,
| not to look up words that are already on your phone screen.
| If you see a word you don't recognise, you write it into a
| note and it gives you the definition instantly
| jahewson wrote:
| You can also use spotlight search from the home screen and type
| "define: whatever" and the first result will be from the iOS
| dictionary.
| trinix912 wrote:
| It's great and it has the same dictionaries as the macOS
| Dictionary app. I hope they add support for more languages in
| the future.
| dfee wrote:
| Awesome. Did not know I could disable that content. Also,
| dropped a few dictionaries I had enabled (Russian? Spanish?
| German?) - hopefully the swipe-to-text will improve accuracy
| now, too.
| gumby wrote:
| Also in the Mac since the original OS X beta...iirc it was in
| the NeXT too.
| interpol_p wrote:
| This was the feature that sold me on Mac OS X in 2003 or so.
| Having an operating system where I could get the dictionary
| definition of any word in any input field, or web browser, or
| piece of UI just by mousing-over it and hitting
| ctrl+command+D
|
| I was a Windows user at the time and the _consistency_ of
| this dictionary lookup throughout the UI just blew me away
| mgaunard wrote:
| I find that reading books is a great way to pick up new words; it
| was quite useful to challenge myself and read while I was
| learning English.
|
| I never really saw the need to look up words in a dictionary
| though, you just eventually learn what the words mean as they are
| repeated throughout the book in various contexts (most authors
| appear to like using the same words over ans over). I think it's
| actually more valuable to learn like this since it develops your
| ability to infer meaning from the various bits of context that
| you have, as well as the grammar and word structure.
|
| For example the guy looked up "stiffened". That's a fairly weird
| thing to look up, why didn't he look up "stiff"?
| atwood22 wrote:
| What I love about this piece is that the author lays out a
| specific set of goals for their project. I find this is immensely
| helpful to do at the start of a project. I often have an idea
| that I think is cool but after writing down what I want to do I
| realize that it's not such a great idea.
| Forricide wrote:
| The flashcards feature of this makes it seem super useful for
| language learning. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support non-
| English languages? At least on iOS, the OS has built-in
| dictionary support for a huge variety of languages. It would be
| super cool to see something just like this app, but with support
| for more languages, perhaps through the OS's dictionary (although
| I'm not sure if iOS makes that available to apps)
| wingerlang wrote:
| Learning language is much more than drilling vocabulary. And I
| say this as someone who has built at least 3 different
| flashcard apps for myself over the years. It is very low down
| on the list, especially if it is words only.
|
| And no, it doesn't seem like iOS gives us access to its
| dictionary as developer, unfortunately.
| Forricide wrote:
| That's unfortunate. I'm lucky enough to have studied my
| target language on & off for over a decade and one of my main
| issues at this point is vocabulary. But you're not wrong -
| it's not useful for everyone.
| internxt wrote:
| regera wrote:
| Excellent app! I had been using Obsidian (writing key-values
| manually) and sometimes use Spotlight (dictionary). Both are not
| really efficient.
| jobigoud wrote:
| How does it compare to Livio collection of dictionary apps, which
| are free, without ads, offline, have bookmarks, notes and
| history?
|
| https://www.livio.app/p/introduction-free-offline-english.ht...
| anonymous344 wrote:
| Downloaded an tested, well done! I'm also non-native eng speaker
| and user case is the same, reading lot of e-books with my phone.
| I would really like to have a typeahead that would help if i
| don't remember the word correcly or the word is not in the basic
| form? in the book
|
| or does the sqllite not support LIKE 'word%' queries?
| [deleted]
| jxramos wrote:
| > Noise Free It's incredible how many distractions this kind of
| app usually has: extra clicks, unnecessary features, rectangular
| ads, and too many typography styles.
|
| I very much like this adaptation of the term noise. I'm starting
| to realize a growing angst against intrusive noisy products that
| present junk to me I did not ask for. I realize there's a non-
| zero cognitive load to ads and variable UI that's unrelated to
| the product and it increasingly a source of minor frustration in
| my life I could do without. Social media has socialized the UI to
| dump suggestions and guides and other junk that gets tossed out
| in times that are inappropriate, one of those "not now please"
| moments. That noise can at times break my concentration and then
| it becomes a strong negative in my mind with a cost to it all.
| It's like coming home and finding your desk surface not how you
| left it then you realize someone moved something trivial or some
| solicitor left you a note. These visual deltas no mater their
| motivation, should all be permission opt in settings.
| wonderbore wrote:
| From my experience, either an app reaches momentum and the
| author wants to monetize it or it was _last updated 4 years
| ago._
|
| Non-monetized good apps are few and far between. One of which
| is actually related, by thai-language.com:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/thai-english-dictionary-tl/id7...
|
| It's clean, it has whole sentences mixed in the vocabulary, it
| links phrases parts to their sub-definitions, and lets you
| paste a whole sentence at once, defining _word by word._
|
| One of my favorite apps. Updated 5 months ago.
| trumpablehump wrote:
| Why does it need updates?
| Zopieux wrote:
| To keep track with the ever changing APIs, and look&feel,
| of the host OS.
|
| I agree that some apps are feature-complete enough to be
| both useful and left without updates for years, but sadly
| they _will_ eventually bitrot after some time and be
| increasingly annoying to use. This is usually the moment
| the maintainer is nowhere to be found as they lost
| interest, are busy, or dead.
| nicbou wrote:
| I use ad blocker rules to cut out a lot of that noise. I found
| the internet impossible to use without it. I have stopped using
| apps because they bypass those rules.
|
| The worst ones are suggested content feeds. They're
| _everywhere_ , including in your operating system.
| jxramos wrote:
| Very true indeed they're cluttering up the OS's and it feels
| like there's no escape.
|
| This unexpected change to the windows taskbar broke my
| concentration on some task I was doing the other day, and
| right away I stopped what I was doing to go chase down how to
| disable the thing so I wouldn't lose more moments of
| concentration in the future.
| https://superuser.com/questions/1725905/get-rid-of-
| decorativ...
|
| Such a crazy idea of our own OS's being the source of
| interruptions. Even iOS is getting in on this with the Maps
| app I noticed the other week, I'd even count iTunes
| displaying a bunch of random album titles that are on the
| ugly end of the spectrum in my opinion. At least iTunes uses
| the same batch of images so one can train to ignore it. It's
| kind of interesting to conceptualize the OS as like this
| pesky idle assistant just hungry for attention and with
| nothing to do who likewise feels its owner is just as idle as
| them with free time and free attention to spare. "My owner
| isn't doing anything special or fun, let me bug him with this
| visual distraction". It's even funny at a meta level to even
| observe myself getting riled up over this growing assault.
|
| It's interesting you say impossible to use without it, I
| wonder if a certain subpopulation of folks are more prone to
| these traps. Basically those with a high degree of attention
| to detail, those with sharp powers of observation, and those
| juggling a ton of things in their lives where spare mental
| capacity is on the short end of the spectrum.
| rrevo wrote:
| Awesome project. Dune was the book which made me write my own
| dictionary app as well - https://www.vedaist.com/!
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| I really like the spirit. And how you presented what you did.
| radhika_hfdi wrote:
| Really useful content!
| radhika_hfdi wrote:
| Mobile Directory application is proven much easier and
| effective way. It can connect multiple people with each other
| very easily. You can maintain the data of all the customer with
| the detailed information at the single platform.
|
| For more information visit:
| https://hirefullstackdeveloperindia.com/hire-mobile-app-deve...
| olup wrote:
| Hey, a bit unrelated, but the blog looks great :-D May I as if
| it's a next.js public template (and, if yes, which one) or a
| private design you are using ?
| graynk wrote:
| It looks like it was taken from https://scribe.rip (an
| alternative frontend for Medium)
| blondin wrote:
| congratulations to both wordnote and stictionary!
|
| but wow, this is very eerie--i have not written an app but
| thought about it!
|
| i am using a combination of three iOS applications right now to
| achieve what both these apps are offering. the built-in
| dictionary of course, notes, and reminders. after looking up
| words using the built-in dictionary, i put them in notes. then
| about once a week, i do a review and set reminders for a few
| select words.
|
| i have been doing this for a few years now. it's heartwarming to
| see these ideas validated not in one but two applications.
| z3t4 wrote:
| For anyone else considering to build a dictionary app, and you
| know a bit of HTML, I recommend making a static web site/app
| which uses service worker to cache all words for offline use, and
| web app manifest so mobile users can add the "app" to their home
| screen. Then use a static site generator to generate an index -
| then you can add a bit of javascript that searches that index. It
| will be blazingly fast, cross platform, and you don't have to
| deal with the app/play store.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Excellent project, and like many here I have also considered
| writing such a dictionary app for my own personal purposes -
| precisely because nothing out there does what I really want: give
| me the ability to easily change dictionary databases and work
| with the entire corpus in productive ways.
|
| For example, I would LOVE to have a dictionary app that allows me
| to paste in some text, and have it build a _custom_ dictionary
| that defines every single word in that text - with the option to
| do it recursively so that the user ends up with a dictionary
| containing all the definitions for all the words in the
| dictionary - that is, the user can construct a complete
| dictionary, rather than a partial one, for any particular text -
| which, when used with the text, will allow the user to understand
| any word in the original text, plus any they encounter in _the
| definitions themselves_.
|
| This would be immensely useful for technical documentation
| writers and other authors for whom it is necessary to use
| uncommon terms.
|
| Anyway, off to parse the rest of the thread to discover everyone
| elses' dictionary projects before I .. start my own .. ;)
| ashish01 wrote:
| This brings back so many memories. I was in a same situation
| (reading a book) and needed on digital offline dictionary. I
| couldn't find anything for my phone back then. It was a Sony
| Ericson phone with 64 _MB_ memory and J2ME as development
| environment.
|
| So I wrote a offline dictionary with a friend of mine based on
| wordnet and J2ME polish. It was my first real world project -
| http://cornucopia.sourceforge.net/
| zehfernandes wrote:
| That's fantastic ashish01. So cool to see the screenshots.
| Different times and capabilities.
| bartvk wrote:
| Awesome. What did the Kill Search menu option do? Did searches
| actually last long to let the user actively wanting to stop
| searching?
| dombili wrote:
| I tried to give this a shot as the blog post resonated with me
| but I simply couldn't get the app to work on my iPhone (13, iOS
| 15.6). When I first launched it I waited the database to setup
| ("Loading language database...") for more than two minutes.
| Knowing for sure it couldn't take that long, I restarted the app
| but it was the same issue. I then re-installed the app but then
| the app just gave me a blank white screen.
|
| It's a new app, shit happens, and if there's a way I can do to
| help you diagnose the issue on my end, I'd be happy to.
| xenodium wrote:
| > No Lock-in This principle comes from the local-first software
| movement: users taking back data ownership so they can export and
| manipulate what they have created.
|
| I'd love for this to become a _well-recognised_ badge of honor,
| bringing more visibility to lesser known tools.
|
| I built a couple of iOS apps that happen to use org as their
| portable file format. The fact that its org is less relevant. The
| iOS apps stand on their own with mobile-friendly UI. If you want
| to peek at the org content, you can too of course:
|
| https://flathabits.com
|
| https://plainorg.com
|
| There are a handful of other org-based tools out there. Org apps
| are great for those with an org background, but these apps can be
| equally recommended for new-comers. What's important is these
| apps serve a purpose while also respecting privacy, portability,
| etc.
|
| https://BrainTool.org
|
| https://logseq.com
|
| https://orgzly.com
|
| https://beorg.app
|
| https://easyorgmode.com
|
| https://organice.200ok.ch
|
| https://orgro.org
| zehfernandes wrote:
| Hey Hacker News!
|
| I'm thrilled to read all the comments with ideas and
| improvements. I will try to answer and keep up with the thread.
|
| Kudos to all the similar initiatives trying to solve the problems
| I outline in the article. It's wonderful to see a zeitgeist about
| dictionaries.
|
| Who wants to jump the article and try the version I built, feel
| free to download the iPhone [1] or Android [2] version or run it
| by itself with the open source repo [3]
|
| 1: https://apps.apple.com/app/wordnote-dictionary/id1596537633
|
| 2:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zehfernand...
|
| 3: https://github.com/zehfernandes/wordnote
|
| Cheers!
| 8191 wrote:
| How did you manage to get the dictionaries for all those
| languages? If I didn't miss it, that part is left open in the
| article after explaining how highly priced they are...
| jobigoud wrote:
| From the article: "I landed on the freeDictionary API that
| uses the Wiktionary as a source.".
| akudha wrote:
| Dictionaries are one of those things that should be free, at
| least the digital version. This is 2022 - shouldn't governments
| pay the dictionary creators using tax payer money and make the
| digital version available for free, to anyone for any use?
|
| How much does it cost to maintain a dictionary anyway? A few
| million dollars at best? It is crazy that a ton of projects don't
| even get started, because these APIs are so expensive and
| unfriendly
| CharlesW wrote:
| What's wrong with Wiktionary, which the author used for this?
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Sounds like it was a bit tedious (and expensive) to hammer
| the server for 30 hours... vs. a downloadable database
| (which, granted, could get out of date).
| CharlesW wrote:
| Yeah, I wonder why they didn't just download it from
| https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/ per
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Help:FAQ.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| The source they used (freeDictionary) does all of the
| work of parsing wiktionary and giving you simple json
| object for each word. (It actually started life as a way
| to get the definitions out of Google's "define:"
| operator, but it seems those days are over)
|
| It also, turns requests for some words, like "rolling"
| into definitions for their root word like "roll", even
| when wiktionary has distinct and useful definitions for
| the word, which makes it less than ideal for me.
| herewulf wrote:
| Turning "rolling" into "roll" is something a stemmer
| does. I'd imagine there are a number of JavaScript
| libraries readily available for this.
| davidjohnstone wrote:
| I wondered the same. The main downside is that you need
| to do some processing to extract the entries from the
| dump and get the plain text of the fields you want.
|
| I'm also a little surprised they didn't think Wiktionary
| was sufficient for languages apart from English. I could
| be wrong, but my impression is that it's pretty good for
| major languages[1].
|
| 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary
| dogweather wrote:
| I just made something like that: https://public.law/dictionary
|
| Scraping government sites for glossaries, mashing up the
| definitions to create a free comparative international
| dictionary.
| labster wrote:
| Why should governments get to decide which words we use? Unless
| you are a plusgood citizen making agitprop for the proles.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is the case in France. We have the Academie Francaise, an
| institution that edits an "official" dictionary. Unlike other
| dictionaries that describe the words that are in current
| usage, this one is supposed to act as a reference for "proper
| French".
|
| The Academie Francaise is not a ruling body anymore, however,
| there is a committee that decides on which words to use,
| following a very bureaucratic process. French people are
| still free to use French as the way they want (thankfully!),
| but it is mandatory for official government communication.
|
| And in case you are wondering, the ones who decide are
| usually famous French writers who got a honorific position
| for their past work. They tend to be completely out of touch
| with the modern world, and with a bureaucratic process that
| doesn't help the result is more silly than manipulative.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > Unless you are a plusgood citizen making agitprop for the
| proles.
|
| what?
| grujicd wrote:
| 1984 newspeak
| labster wrote:
| Almost all Newspeak, but "agitprop" is Russian and
| predates the book.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| That's a strange take.
|
| They won't they would fund some other org or dept to do the
| work. Same way you have a public education system, or public
| health care.
| JackFr wrote:
| A dictionary is a creative, curated and editorial work.
| While I could see, in the US for example, the National
| Endowment for the Humanities supporting the work, it is
| very far removed from something like the National Institute
| if Standards and Technology.
|
| It is not a given that such work is best handled through
| the public purse.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| It's also not clear it won't work.
|
| Governments fund the arts all the time. Why is there
| automatically an assumption that this will end with the
| government editing the dictionary to control speech?
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Dictionaries are more free today than ever before. It's
| actually surprising how free they are given that (good)
| dictionaries are actually very labour intensive to create.
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