Look up the word for a definition

There are many words out there, as you may have noticed. Long words, short words, a thousand synonyms and antonyms for each one of them, leaving you feeling confused and a little bit illiterate. Luckily, whether you’re browsing the Internet, reading a PDF or working in a Word or Google Docs document, it’s actually quite easy to look up words by definition on your PC.

Here’s how.

While this article is focusing on Windows 10, most of the methods used are applicable for various operating systems

Look Up Word Definition in Chrome, Edge and Firefox

Most of the reading you do on your PC is probably in your web browser. The good news is that all the major browsers have extensions that you can install, letting you look up any word you read with a simple double-click.

In Chrome, your best bet is Google Dictionary, which when installed will let you look up the dictionary definition of any word with a simple double-click.

As a nice addendum to that, there’s an extension for this extension (an exten-inception, if you will) called Flashcards, where a little “Save” option appears when you double-click words, letting you save the words then test yourself on them using flashcards in your own time.

Now that Microsoft Edge has moved over to Chromium, you can also get the above extensions for the browser from the Chrome Web Store, while Firefox’s answer is the extension Define-It.

Look Up Word Definition in a PDF

Now that we’ve covered option for when you’re browsing the Web, let’s look at some options for when you’re reading a PDF document.

If you have one of Adobe’s PDF readers, such as Acrobat Reader DC, you can just double-click a word in a PDF document, then select “Look up [word]”. This will open the word’s definition at Dictionary.com in your default browser.

The PDF viewer in Chrome or Edge sadly doesn’t work with the Dictionary extensions, and to define a word you’ll need to double-click it, then click “Search the web for [word]”, which will direct you to your browser’s default search engine and tell you the definition.

Look Up Word Definition in Word or Google Docs

The two most popular word processing software at the moment is Microsoft Word and Google Docs, both of which have their own word-definition tools integrated into them.

To look up a word definition in Google Docs, you can either right-click the word and then click “Define [word]”, or, if you lean toward keyboard shortcuts, select the word, then click Ctrl + Shift + Y.

In Microsoft Word you can look up a word definition by right-clicking the word, then clicking “Look Up [word]” in the context menu. Or, as a shortcut, hold the Alt key on your keyboard, then just regular left-click the word.

Want to keep playing around on your Windows 10 PC? Here’s how to check CPU temperatures in Windows 10, and we also have a handy guide on how to check your hard drive health in Windows 10.

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.

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.)

(Definition of look up from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

When you’re in Google Docs and want to check the definition of a word, all you need to do is type the word (or select an existing one) and perform a quick keyboard shortcut. For Windows users, that shortcut is Control+Shift+Y. For Mac users, it’s Command+Shift+Y. That’ll bring up the definition and provide you with the ability to look up more words if you like. It’s simple and can be a really useful tool when you’re writing.

For a demonstration, check out the video above.

The App Store’s virtual shelves carry dozens of dictionary apps but did you know that Apple offered a feature designed to make it easy for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad owners to look up word definitions in a bunch of foreign languages?

Built-in dictionaries are available system-wide and work great as a general quick-reference tool so consider using them whenever possible. In this tutorial, we show you how to download and manage specific language dictionaries, use the Look Up feature and remove dictionaries you might no longer need in order to conserve storage space.

Note that the dictionary is a feature of the software keyboard only.

Just to be clear, the dictionary used for auto-correction is different from the dictionary used for word definitions. Also, changing the language of the keyboard automatically changes the language of the dictionary used for auto-correction and predictive text, whereas word definitions are not enabled automatically unless you manually download the dictionary file.

If a dictionary file isn’t available locally on your iOS device and you try to define a word, you will be greeted with a “No definition found” message. If you experience issues when defining words on iOS, follow these steps to download dictionaries to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

How to add dictionaries to iPhone and iPad

1. Go to the Settings app, and tap General > Dictionary. A new screen shows, listing all of the available dictionaries.
2. Now find one or more appropriate dictionaries you would like to use and tap it to download to your device.

The circular progress bar indicates the download progress. As soon as the dictionaries have been downloaded to your device, you can start looking up word definitions in languages for which iOS has dictionary files available locally on the device.

How to remove dictionaries from iPhone and iPad

iOS dictionaries are not exactly storage hogs, but that doesn’t mean you cannot save some storage space on your iOS device by removing dictionaries that are no longer needed. Here’s how to do that:

1. Open the Settings app and go to General > Dictionary.
2. Just tap a previously downloaded dictionary to uncheck it. It will then be removed from your device.

How to look up word definitions on iPhone and iPad

As mentioned, your iOS device must have at least one dictionary file available locally before you can define words. Since English is my primary language, I download various English (US) and English (UK) dictionaries. These cover almost every word that I come across while reading articles, browsing Twitter, and more.

Follow these steps to see the definition of a word on iPhone and iPad:

1. Launch Safari or any app that allows you to select text.
2. Tap and hold the word to select it.
3. Select Look Up in the bubble menu to see that word’s definition.

Bringing up a definition page for a word presents all kinds of information. You can tap on one of the entries to get more information about the word. In addition to the meaning of the word, you should also see examples of how to use it in a sentence and its origin, if possible.

If you downloaded more than one dictionary, multiple word definitions from other sources and in other languages will be presented here. For example, you can download foreign language dictionaries to translate foreign words into English.

Tip: To learn the pronunciation of foreign languages, you may want to enable Siri’s speak selection feature that reads the selected text out loud. Just open Settings on your device, navigate to Accessibility > Spoken Content and flip the switch next to the Speak Selection feature to the ON position. A Speak button should now appear when you select text in apps. With this feature, you can also get your iPhone or iPad to read whole iBooks to you, for example. And should you select the Highlight Content option, iOS will highlight words as they are spoken.

Supported dictionary languages

The iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices can download dictionaries available in the following languages:

• English (US), English (UK)
• Arabic-English
• Bangla-English
• Cantonese, Traditional-English
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese, Simplified-English
• Chinese, Traditional
• Chinese, Traditional (Hong Kong)
• Chinese, Traditional-English
• Czech-English
• Danish
• Dutch
• Dutch-English
• Finnish-English
• French
• French-English
• German
• German-English
• German-French
• Gujarati-English
• Hebrew
• Hindi
• Hindi-English
• Hungarian-English
• Indonesian-English
• Italian
• Italian-English
• Japanese
• Japanese-Chinese, Simplified
• Japanese-English
• Korean
• Korean-English
• Norwegian
• Polish-English
• Portuguese
• Portuguese-English
• Russian
• Russian-English
• Spanish
• Spanish-English
• Swedish
• Tamil-English
• Telugu-English
• Thai
• Thai-English
• Turkish
• Turkish-English
• Urdu-English
• Vietnamese-English

Future iOS releases might include dictionaries for additional languages.

Other ways to define words on iOS

In addition to the built-in Look Up feature, there are other ways of defining words on iOS that don’t require manual dictionary downloads, including the following:

Use Spotlight

You can swipe down and type a word to quickly see its meaning. This tutorial shows you how to do that in detail.

Use Google Search

If your device has an Internet connection, you can either use Google’s native application for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, or simply visit Google.com in Safari and type “define” followed by a word you wish to look up the definition for. Sometimes you can just type a word and have Google automatically define it for you.

Use dedicated apps

The App Store is packed to the gills with various applications for research and reference, including dedicated dictionary apps. We highlighted some of the best dictionary apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, but you can always check for new ones by firing up the App Store on your device to search for dictionary.

Benefits of using built-in dictionaries on iPhone and iPad

While third-party dictionary apps get the job done, their word definitions are rarely available in other apps via Share Sheet actions. It may be, therefore, far easier to use iOS’s built-in Look Up feature to look up word definitions.

Unlike most dictionary apps, iOS’s dictionaries are available system-wide in almost any application that supports text selection and can be accessed quickly with a single tap.

In addition, once iOS dictionaries are stored locally on an iOS device, you can define words in apps without an Internet connection, unlike the Google Search method.

A major downside to using iOS dictionaries is the need to manually download the dictionary. But then again, a third-party dictionary app must be downloaded, too.

Devices with iOS 8.1.3 and later offer configuration profile options for system administrators to restrict access to spelling and definition features on supervised devices. Other features that can be restricted via configuration profiles include definition look-up for highlighted words, spell check and autocorrection while typing, and Apple’s predictive keyboard.

Check out next:

• How to look up foreign word definitions with Translate for iPhone
• How to use your iPhone to translate foreign words to English (no app required)
• New to Mac? Check out the built-in Dictionary app