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shankar2

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 7, 2009
1,020
54
Hi so I find regularly that Apple Catalina's built in dictionary is not complete (english). Is there a better dictionary available? Perhaps even contain slangs etc? Please advise. Thanks1
 

allan.nyholm

macrumors 68020
Nov 22, 2007
2,308
2,563
Aalborg, Denmark
I was going to suggest Dictionaries.io but it doesn't fit your request of having slang available.

Also, I read somewhere that some files for a wordprocessor could be made into being available in Apple's own Dictionary.app - "Stardict" something - I forget. But, I'll see if I can look through my bookmarks and find anything more helpful about this. I can't say if these will add slang, but I just wanted to share the knowledge I have.
 

ApfelKuchen

macrumors 601
Aug 28, 2012
4,335
3,012
Between the coasts
There are actually multiple dictionaries built into Catalina.

Open the Dictionary app, and open the Search menu. I'm in the US. By default I have a choice to search: New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, Apple Dictionary, Wikipedia, and Search All Dictionaries. If you have the Dictionary app open on screen you can also make those selections from the app's toolbar.

If you open the Dictionary app Preferences you can add even more; translation dictionaries, British English and British Thesaurus, various other languages....

There's also a method for creating and importing your own specialty dictionaries, but it's a feature provided only when using Japanese input methods (don't ask me why). It's still available as a hack/workaround - nothing prevents us from creating an English specialty dictionary using that method. See https://support.apple.com/guide/jap...ate-text-files-import-specialty-jpim10226/mac
 
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allan.nyholm

macrumors 68020
Nov 22, 2007
2,308
2,563
Aalborg, Denmark
Found some stuff about StarDict - again, I can't tell if a slang dictionary is available, but here's some information
https://www.mackungfu.org/adding-new-dictionaries-to-your-mac

Requires reading. Haven't done any of the things from the mentioned article. It's rather new to what I was thinking of.

The Urbandictionary would be great having available within macOS


Edit... okay article is from 2015 -- it is an rather old article and suggestion - the only link that I found to be available is the GitHub link. The StarDict links there 404's.

I'm trying out the tip from @ApfelKuchen above by downloading the file mentioned here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/63spoc
Just to see if I can do anything with it.
 
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shankar2

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 7, 2009
1,020
54
I was going to suggest Dictionaries.io but it doesn't fit your request of having slang available.

Also, I read somewhere that some files for a wordprocessor could be made into being available in Apple's own Dictionary.app - "Stardict" something - I forget. But, I'll see if I can look through my bookmarks and find anything more helpful about this. I can't say if these will add slang, but I just wanted to share the knowledge I have.

Ok so pls forget slang, dictionaries.io is better than apple app?
 

allan.nyholm

macrumors 68020
Nov 22, 2007
2,308
2,563
Aalborg, Denmark
Ok so pls forget slang, dictionaries.io is better than apple app?

it's not a Dictionary application like the one Apple provides where you can look things up, but it's for adding more dictionaries like the one you can see in the attached images. Those are mine right now. Some I think I might use. These adds to the existing ones in Dictionary.app from Apple and some are duplicates but I'd like to add them in because I can.
Screen Shot 2020-06-01 at 10.36.26.png Screen Shot 2020-06-01 at 10.36.19.png
 
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