Dictionary (software)

Last updated

Dictionary
Developer(s) Apple Inc.
Stable release
2.3.0 / August 18, 2018;5 years ago (2018-08-18) [1]
Operating system macOS
Type Dictionary
License Proprietary
Website www.apple.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Dictionary is an application developed by Apple Inc. as a part of macOS. The application provides definitions and synonyms from various dictionaries, Wikipedia articles and a glossary of Apple-related terms.

Contents

Dictionary was introduced in OS X 10.4 with the New Oxford American Dictionary and Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus (as well as the Wikipedia and Apple Dictionary sections). 10.5 added Japanese dictionaries, 10.7 added the British Oxford Dictionary of English , and 10.8 added French, German, Spanish and Chinese.

History

OS X's progenitor, OPENSTEP (and NEXTSTEP) provided similar functionality, called Digital Webster, providing dictionary and thesaurus definitions from Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary and Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus (termed the "First Digital Edition"). OPENSTEP Services provide lookup from all applications.

Dictionary was first introduced with Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" and provided definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition . With Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion", Dictionary was updated to the Third Edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary and the British Oxford Dictionary of English was added. [2]

Functionality

Words can be entered in the search bar by just typing the first few letters. The application will perform an incremental search to show any matching headwords or forms and will try to bypass spelling errors. Clicking on any word in a definition searches for that word in the dictionary again. Almost any word is clickable, except the pronunciations in phonetic characters and numerals.

The Preferences allow a user to select from three different pronunciation schemes, either US English (Diacritical or IPA), or British English (IPA).

The dictionary and thesaurus in Dictionary are in an XML format, but make use of precompiled binary index files to access the XML file directly. Therefore, the lexicon cannot easily be modified. However, the user can add new words to the macOS system-wide spell checker, which uses its own lexicon.

Quick access

Other languages

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) added the Japanese-language dictionary Daijisen, Progressive English to Japanese and Progressive Japanese to English dictionaries, and the 25,000-entry thesaurus "Tsukaikata no Wakaru Ruigo Reikai Jiten" (使い方の分かる類語例解辞典), all of which are provided by the Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The Japanese dictionaries do not show up by default, and must be enabled in Preferences.

In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, the Japanese dictionaries were replaced by Super Daijirin and the Wisdom English-Japanese Dictionary. In addition, dictionaries were also added for French (Multidictionnaire de la Langue Française for Macs sold in Europe, or Les Éditions Québec Amérique for Macs sold in America), German ( Duden ), Spanish (Vox), and Chinese (Standard Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese).

Software such as DictUnifier [4] can be used to add more dictionaries to the application.

List of all pre-installed dictionaries

TypeLanguage(s)Original nameEnglish namePublisher
Language ALanguage B
Monolingual English (US)New Oxford American Dictionary Oxford University Press
MonolingualEnglish (UK)Oxford Dictionary of EnglishOxford University Press
Monolingual Norwegian Bokmål Norsk OrdbokNorwegian Monolingual Dictionary Kunnskapsforlaget ANS (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Danish Politikens Nudansk OrdbogPolitikens Modern Danish Dictionary Politikens Forlagshus (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Swedish NE OrdbokNE Dictionary Nationalencyklopedin (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Dutch Prisma woordenboek Nederlands Uitgeverij Unieboek (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual German Duden-Wissensnetz deutsche Sprache Bibliographisches Institut GmbH (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual French Multidictionnaire de la language français Les Éditions Québec Amérique Inc. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Portuguese Dicionário de Português Editora Objetiva (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Spanish Diccionario General de la Lengua Española Vox Larousse Editorial, S.L. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Italian Nuovo Devoto-Oli : il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo. Mondadori Education S.p.A. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Russian Толковый словарь русского языкаExplanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language "Universe and Education" Publishing House Ltd. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Turkish Arkadaş Türkçe Sözlük Arkadaş Publishing LTD (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Hebrew מילון אבן-שושן מחודש ומותאם לשנות האלפייםEven-Shoshan Dictionary Renewed and Updated for the 21st Century The New Dictionary Ltd (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Hindi राजपाल हिन्दी शब्दकोशRajpal Hindi Dictionary Rajpal & Sons (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Thai พจนานุกรมไทย ฉบับทันสมัยและสมบูรณ์Complete Thai Dictionary Se-Education PLC (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Korean 뉴에이스 국어사전New Ace Korean Language Dictionary DIOTEK (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Japanese スーパー大辞林Super Daijirin Japanese Dictionary Sanseido Co., Ltd. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Chinese (simplified)现代汉语规范词典The Standard Dictionary of Contemporary ChineseOxford University Press & Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing, Co., Ltd.
Monolingual Chinese (traditional)五南國語活用辭典Wu-Nan Chinese Dictionary Wu-Nan Book Inc. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Monolingual Chinese (traditional, Hong Kong)商務新詞典（全新版）Commercial New Dictionary for common word or character Commercial Press (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Thesaurus English (US)Oxford American Writer's ThesaurusOxford University Press
ThesaurusEnglish (UK)Oxford Thesaurus of EnglishOxford University Press
ThesaurusChinese (simplified)现代汉语同义词典Modern Thesaurus/Synonyms & Antonyms Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Bilingual ChineseJapanese超級クラウン中日辞典Sanseido's Super Crown Chinese-Japanese DictionarySanseido Company Ltd. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
JapaneseChineseクラウン日中辞典Sanseido's Crown Japanese-Chinese Dictionary
BilingualDutchEnglishPrisma Handwoordenboek EngelsUitgeverij Unieboek (licensed to Oxford University Press)
BilingualGermanEnglishOxford German DictionaryOxford University Press
BilingualFrenchEnglishOxford-Hachette French DictionaryOxford University Press & Hachette Livre
BilingualPortugueseEnglishOxford Portuguese DictionaryOxford University Press
BilingualSpanishEnglishGran Diccionario Oxford - Español-InglésOxford Spanish DictionaryOxford University Press
EnglishSpanishGran Diccionario Oxford - Inglés-Español
BilingualEnglishItalianOxford Paravia Il Dizionario inglese - italianoOxford - Paravia Italian Dictionary Pearson Italia & Oxford University Press
ItalianEnglishOxford Paravia Il Dizionario italiano - inglese
Bilingual Polish EnglishWielki słownik polsko-angielskiOxford PWN Polish-English Dictionary Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN S.A. & Oxford University Press
BilingualRussianEnglishOxford Russian DicitonaryOxford University Press
Bilingual Arabic EnglishOxford Arabic DictionaryOxford University Press
BilingualHindiEnglishThe Oxford Hindi English DictionaryOxford University Press
EnglishHindiOxford English-English-Hindi Dictionary
BilingualEnglishThaiพจนานุกรมอังกฤษ-ไทย & ไทย-อังกฤษ ฉบับทันสมัยและสมบูรณ์ที่สุดNew SE-ED English-Thai & Thai-English Dictionary Dr. Wit Theingburanathum (licensed to Oxford University Press)
ThaiEnglish
Bilingual Vietnamese EnglishLac Viet Dictioanry Lac Viet Computing Corp. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
BilingualEnglishKorean뉴에이스 영한사전New Ace English-Korean DictionaryDIOTEK Co., Ltd. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
KoreanEnglish뉴에이스 한영사전New Ace Korean-English Dictionary
BilingualEnglishJapaneseウィズダム英和辞典The Wisdom English-Japanese DictionarySanseido Company Ltd. (licensed to Oxford University Press)
JapaneseEnglishウィズダム和英辞典The Wisdom Japanese-English Dictionary
Bilingual Indonesian EnglishOxford Study Indonesian DictionaryOxford University Press
Bilingual Cantonese English英譯廣東口語詞典A Dictionary of Cantonese Colloquialisms in EnglishCommercial Press (licensed to University Press)
BilingualEnglish Gujarati Gujarati Lexicon English-Gujarati Gujarati Lexicon & Oxford University Press
GujaratiEnglishGujarati-English Dictionaries
Bilingual Tamil EnglishOxford Tamil-Tamil-English DictionariesOxford University Press
EnglishTamilOxford English-English-Tamil Dictionaries
BilingualEnglish Telugu Oxford English-English-Telugu DictionaryOxford University Press
TeluguEnglishOxford Telugu-English Dictionary
BilingualEnglish Urdu Oxford English-Urdu DictionaryOxford University Press
UrduEnglishOxford Urdu-English Dictionary
BilingualFrenchGermanPONS Großwörterbuch Französisch – Deutsch PONS GmbH (licensed to Oxford University Press)
GermanFrenchPONS Großwörterbuch Deutsch – Französisch
BilingualEnglishChinese (simplified)牛津英汉汉英词典Oxford Chinese DictionaryOxford University Press & Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd.
Chinese (simplified)English
BilingualEnglishChinese (traditional)譯典通英漢雙向字典Dr. Eye Chinese English Bilingual Dicitonary INVENTEC (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Chinese (traditional)English
Monolingual, Chinese Idioms Chinese (simplified)商务成语大词典Commercial Idiom DictionaryCommercial Press (licensed to Oxford University Press)
Bilingual, Chinese IdiomsChinese (traditional)English漢英對照成語詞典Chinese Idioms and Their English EquivalentsCommercial Press (licensed to Oxford University Press)
OtherEnglishApple Dictionary Apple Inc.
OtherMultiple languagesWikipedia Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

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References

  1. ↑ "OS X 10.10 Yosemite release date". October 16, 2014. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
  2. ↑ "Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: New dictionaries, multiple word views, multitouch lookups". Apple Insider. April 12, 2011. Retrieved October 11, 2012.
  3. ↑ "Get Immediate Dictionary Definitions Using Spotlight". OS X Daily. Archived from the original on April 13, 2012. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
  4. ↑ "mac-dictionary-kit - Mac Dictionary Kit - Google Project Hosting" . Retrieved June 15, 2013.
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