Monday, August 18, 2008

more tools

    more online tools for translators - with descriptions taken directly from a list posted at
    Dumb Little Man

  • Dictionary.com
    Dictionary.com is probably the most common and most comprehensive of all the dictionary tools available. Apart from giving the word meanings and pronunciation, it also provides various tools (like the dictionary.com toolbar), RSS feeds to improve vocabulary and word explorer podcasts.

  • Merriam-Webstar Online
    Merriam-Webstar Online is a huge online resource for learning and improving your English. It provides dictionary and thesaurus which includes spanish-english and medical dictionaries. You can easily look up words and listen to their pronunciation. Further it provides other resources like crosswords and word games. It also has a visual dictionary which combines words with images.

  • MetaGlossary
    MetaGlossary.com approaches the task of finding meanings of words in a different way. It aggregates various links on the web which provide an explanation to the term and shows the results. Hence it does the job of pulling definitions of the word from the entire web.

  • Thsrs
    Thsrs helps you to get shorter synonyms of long words. Although it's not dead accurate but still can be useful at times. It also provides a browser plug-in to easily look up shorter synonyms of words with a right click.

  • Wordsmith
    Wordsmith is a nice resource for new words, especially its ' A Word A Day ' newsletter, which is immensely popular and delivers new words everyday to your email inbox.

  • Ninjawords

  • Ninjawords, like Definr, claims to be a very fast dictionary. Although it doesn't show words as you type like Definr but is certainly very fast in displaying the meanings and synonyms once you hit enter. It also has a random tab which can be used to play around and learn new words.

  • Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus
    Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus is a free-to-try visual tool which shows related words in an interactive map and helps you to easily find their meanings and listen to their pronunciation.

  • AskOxford
    AskOxford is the online version of the famous dictionary by the Oxford University press. It's comprehensive without a doubt and includes various other vocabulary resources and a quotations dictionary.

  • Alpha Dictionary
  • Alpha Dictionary doesn't directly show you the meaning of a word. Instead it searches all the available online dictionaries (most of them) and displays the results in the form of links to the meaning of that word in those dictionaries. So choose your favorite dictionary (if at all you have one) and click on the corresponding link to view its meaning.