Looking up words for their meanings and definitions is no big deal. A glut of free online dictionaries has made it a matter of a selection and click. Helping you further are right-click context menu searches, browser add-ons and extensions like the seven we cover here.
Bloggers, wordsmiths, and writers of all hues live in a sea of words. Thanks to the web, we also live most of the time in our browsers. Looking up words for their meanings and definitions is no big deal. A glut of free online dictionaries has made it a matter of a selection and click. Helping you further are right-click context menu searches, browser add-ons and extensions. Just like any other browser, Chrome has its own legion of extensions that help us look up words and meanings as we browse.
The Chrome Web Store is where we are headed. Now let’s pick up seven extensions that make word searching not only easy, but also fun and educational.
Google Dictionary (by Google)
This dictionary extension has probably seen the most downloads. On a webpage, you can double click on any word and see its complete definition displayed in a bubble. The extension supports multiple languages and also can translate a foreign word to your default language. Clicking on the reference link takes you to the Google Dictionary page where you can see more web definitions on the word. You can set language and other choices from the Options menu of the extension.
Dictionary Lookup
This dictionary extension sources word meanings from Wiktionary, but what’s more revealing is the Dictionary Lookup Options page which tells you all about the handiness of this browser helper. The Content section allows you to streamline the information that you want to get with a click of the mouse. The meanings are displayed in a clean and minimal inline box. You can set the extension to show other info like usage examples, audio pronunciation and synonyms. You can also lookup manually-entered queries using a shortcut which displays a small lookup box.
Quickrr Dictionary [No Longer Available]
You can search for a dictionary meaning by clicking the address bar icon and entering the word in the field box. Quickrr also lets you lookup Google Dictionary, Google Image Search, and Wikipedia for the word. This extension could benefit from a richer display of meanings as it seems a bit too simplistic.
Image Definitions for Dictionaries
To enhance your vocabulary, it pays to use words in sentences and also visualize them with the help of real world images. This extension solves part of the recommendation by sourcing relevant images from Flickr and inserting them into the three online dictionaries it supports – Google Dictionary, Google Search (using the define: operator), and the Urban Dictionary. You can set it to search for ‘Safe’ images from the extension’s Options.
Urban Dictionary Search
If you are talking about Urban Dictionary and if you want to look up the usage of a slang or a colloquial word, then this handy extension is just the thing to have in your Chrome browser. Click on the icon and enter the word. You will be taken to the page with the meaning in a trice.
Phras.in
If you are in any way interested in the English language then this phrase comparison extension is a must install. This extension is for the grammar buffs who would like to see which among two phrases is a better fit. You can compare two phrases and also contextualize them to see their usage in real world sentences.
Codec Dictionary [No Longer Available]
So far, we have catered to the English buffs. As this is a tech website, you could also do a bit with the Codec dictionary. It’s a dictionary for multimedia geeks who want to look up words like DivX, colorspace, transcode etc. I have found it to be useful on more than one occasion. All the definitions are under 300 characters.
Remembering the meanings of all words that we are bombarded with every day may be a problem. Looking up their meanings and their usage context certainly is not with the help of these educational extensions. Do you have one installed in your Chrome extension gallery?
In some cases, your great new name might have a second meaning you are unaware of. This can either be in the context of another language, unintentional second meanings from different writing of the domain names or simply in the context of a subculture. Better safe than sorry is the best approach to avoiding issues for your business, product or side-project. Use our free profanity checker tool:
Naming Gone Wrong
Second meanings and unintentional swear words can easily become part of your business name or domain name.
Second Meanings in other Languages
Your business- or product-name might sounds great in English, but has a hidden meaning, for example, in Spanish. You think this isn’t likely? This much more common than you might expect — below you find a list of popular cases of second means in other languages:
- The LaPuta from Mazda has a secondary meaning as «the whore».
- With the Pajero Mitsubishi has accidentally named their car «wanker».
- US-American car companies aren’t safe either. Buick LaCrosse has a second meaning. In French it means «masturbating teenagers».
- Fairly innocent compared to the previous examples is the Chevrolet Nova. In Spanish it means “It Doesn’t Go”.
Source: https://www.oddee.com/item_93544.aspx
Popular Cases of Accidental Second Meanings
When you come up with a name, you might not directly spot the second mention, even it’s in your own native language. Some examples are blow:
- Therapist.com might be read as TheRapist.com.
- It doesn’t inspire quality, if your company might be read as it’s crap from the domain name itscrap.com.
- Pen Island with the domain name PenIsland.net might become penis land.
Source: https://www.boredpanda.com/worst-domain-names/
How to Handle Profanity?
Profanity in user-generated content (UGC) isn’t an easy task to handle. However, with a mix of automated flagging and manual actions you can manage comments, posts and other forms of user-generated content effectively.
Free Word Safety Check
In some cases a direct check is the easiest way. If you got a name you would like to check you can do so directly and on the top of this page. Enter any word, name or phrase you would like to check against our profanity word list. This allows you to verify if a word of part of word matches against a word on our bad-word list.
Profanity Word List
Our list of profane words has been curated from several sources. It includes over 14,000 words terms from several languages. All terms covering swear words, inappropriate words and phrases, common insults, and number of offensive words. The list gets regularly updated and extended.
Suggest terms
If you found a term or phrase missing which should be considered profane, offending, or generally inappropriate please reach out to add the term.
API access
Access to our API endpoint to check texts for offensive words is possible. This allows to push a text for profanity word check to the API and receive a result almost instantly. Please get in touch under contact on my blog.
Please note, a download of the profanity word list isn’t possible.
How do I use OneLook’s thesaurus / reverse dictionary?
OneLook lets you find any kind of word for any kind of writing.
Like a traditional thesaurus, you
can use it to find synonyms and antonyms, but it’s far more flexible.
Describe what you’re looking for with a single word, a few words,
or even a whole sentence. Type in your description and hit
Enter (or select a word that shows up in the autocomplete preview)
to see the related words.
You can order, filter, and explore the
words that come back in a variety of creative ways.
Here’s a video which
goes over some of the basics.
What are some examples?
Exploring the results
Click on any result to see definitions and usage examples tailored to your search,
as well as links to follow-up searches and additional usage information when available.
OneLook knows about more than 2 million different
words and expressions covering every topic under the sun.
Try exploring a favorite topic for a while and you’ll be surprised
how much new stuff there is to learn!
Ordering the results
Your results will initially appear with the most closely related word shown first,
the second-most closely shown second, and so on.
You can re-order the results in a variety of different ways, including
alphabetically, by length, by popularity, by modernness, by formality, and by other
aspects of style. Click the
box that says «Closest meaning first…» to see them all.
(Here’s a short video about sorting and filtering
with OneLook Thesaurus.)
Filtering the results
You can refine your search by clicking on the «Advanced filters» button
on the results page. This lets you narrow down your results to match
a certain starting letter, number of letters, number of syllables, related
concept, meter, vowel sound, or number of syllables.
Read more details on filters if you’re interested in how they work.
I’m only looking for synonyms! What’s with all of these weird results?
For some kinds of searches only the
first result or the first few results are truly synonyms
or good substitutions for your search word.
We highlight these results in yellow.
Beyond that, the results are meant to inspire you to consider similar words and adjacent
concepts. Not all of the results will make sense at first, but they’re all
connected with your search in some way. We’d rather give you too many options than
too few. If you’re unsure of a word, we urge you to click on
it to check its definitions and usage examples before using it in your Oscars
acceptance speech or honors thesis.
What are letter patterns?
If you know some letters in the word you’re looking for, you can enter a pattern instead of, or in addition to, a description. Here are how
patterns work:
- The asterisk (*) matches any number of letters.
That means that you can use it as a placeholder for any part of a word or phrase.
For example, if you enter blueb* you’ll get all the terms that start with «blueb»; if you enter
*bird
you’ll get all the terms that end with «bird»; if you enter
*lueb*
you’ll get all the terms that contain the sequence «lueb»,
and so forth. An asterisk can match zero letters, too. -
The question mark (?) matches exactly one letter.
That means that you can use it as a placeholder for a single letter
or symbol. The query l?b?n?n,
for example, will find the word «Lebanon». -
The number-sign (#) matches any English consonant.
For example, the query tra#t finds the word «tract» but not «trait». -
The at-sign (@) matches any English vowel (including «y»).
For example, the query abo@t finds the word «about» but not «abort». -
NEW! The comma (,) lets you combine multiple patterns into one.
For example, the query ?????,*y* finds 5-letter words
that contain a «y» somewhere, such as «happy» and «rhyme». -
NEW! Use double-slashes (//) before
a group of letters to unscramble them (that is, find anagrams.)
For example, the query //soulbeat will find «absolute»
and «bales out»,
and re//teeprsn will find «represent» and «repenters».
You can use another double-slash to end the group and put letters you’re sure of to the
right of it. For example, the query //blabrcs//e will find «scrabble».
Question marks can signify unknown letters as usual; for example, //we???
returns 5-letter words that contain a W and an E, such as «water» and «awake». -
NEW! A minus sign (—) followed by some letters at the end of a pattern means «exclude these letters». For example, the query sp???-ei finds 5-letter words that start with «sp» but do not contain an «e»or an «i», such as «spoon» and «spray».
-
NEW! A plus sign (+) followed by some letters at the end of a pattern means «restrict to these letters». For example, the query *+ban finds «banana».
- On OneLook’s main search or directly on OneLook Thesaurus, you can combine patterns and thesaurus lookups
by putting a colon (:) after a pattern and then typing
a description of the word, as in
??lon:synthetic fabric and the other examples above.
Other ways to access this service:
- Drag this link to your browser’s bookmarks bar for a convenient button that goes to the thesaurus:
OneLook
- Enter onelook.com/word into your browser’s address bar to go directly to the OneLook Thesaurus entry for word.
- We offer a OneLook Thesaurus iPhone/iPad app
for a low subscription fee, with a two-week free trial.
This gives you OneLook at your fingertips, and
several cool app-only features, while helping us maintain the service for all! - If you use Google Docs, the thesaurus is integrated into the free OneLook Thesaurus Google Docs Add-On as the «Synonyms» button. (Wildcard patterns are not yet suppoerted by this add-on.)
- If you regularly use the main OneLook site, you can put colon (:) into any OneLook search box,
followed by a description, to go directly to the thesaurus. - If you’re a developer, the Datamuse API gives you access to the core features of this site.
Is this available in any language other than English?
The same interface is now available in Spanish at OneLook Tesauro
as a beta version. More languages are coming!
How does it work?
We use a souped-up version of our own Datamuse API,
which in turn uses several lingustic resources described in the «Data sources» section
on that page. The definitions come from Wiktionary,
Wikipedia, and WordNet.
Here are some known problems
with the current system.
Much gratitude to Gultchin et al for the algorithm behind the «Most funny-sounding» sort order.
Profanity and problematic word associations
If you’re using this site with children, be forewarned you’ll
find profanity and other vulgar expressions if you use OneLook frequently.
(We take an unflinching look at how words have actually been used; scrubbing out
hurtful wordswould be a disservice to everyone.)
Some of the thesaurus results come from a statistical analysis of the
words in a large collection of books written in the past two
centuries. A handful of times we’ve found that this analysis can lead
us to suggest word associations that reflect racist or harmful
stereotypes present in this source material. If you see one of these,
please know that we do not endorse what the word association implies.
In egregious cases we will remove it from the site if you
report it to us via the feedback link below.
Privacy
No personally identifying information is ever collected on this site
or by any add-ons or apps associated with OneLook. OneLook Thesaurus sends
your search query securely to the Datamuse API, which keeps a log file of
the queries made to the service in the last 24 hours. The log file is deleted
after 24 hours and we do not retain any long-term information about your
IP address or invididual queries.
Who’s behind this site and where can I send my comments and complaints feedback?
OneLook is a service of Datamuse.
You can send us feedback here.
The sunburst logo (🔆) is the emoji symbol for «high
brightness», which we aspire to create with OneLook. (The
graphic came from the open-source Twemoji
project.)
How to get the meaning of a word in all language represented in english using google translate? For eg., If the input if Lion(English), then the output should be,
leon(Spanish)
lion(French)
singam(Tamil)
simhah(Hindi)
and so on.
asked Apr 10, 2012 at 18:09
StrangerStranger
10.2k18 gold badges78 silver badges114 bronze badges
4
Use the example from here:
<?php
require_once '../../src/apiClient.php';
require_once '../../src/contrib/apiTranslateService.php';
$client = new apiClient();
$client->setApplicationName('Google Translate PHP Starter Application');
// Visit https://code.google.com/apis/console?api=translate to generate your
// client id, client secret, and to register your redirect uri.
// $client->setDeveloperKey('insert_your_developer_key');
$service = new apiTranslateService($client);
$langs = $service->languages->listLanguages();
print "<h1>Languages</h1><pre>" . print_r($langs, true) . "</pre>";
$translations = $service->translations->listTranslations('Hello', 'hi');
print "<h1>Translations</h1><pre>" . print_r($translations, true) . "</pre>";
listTranslations gives you the information you seek.
I also recommend reading the documentation, since it’s brief: code.google.com/apis/language/translate/v2/using_rest.html
answered Apr 10, 2012 at 18:27
AlainAlain
26.4k19 gold badges110 silver badges182 bronze badges
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