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Thankfully Wiktionary imported wholesale the old Webster's dictionary (due partly to it being in the public domain). It has the same multitude of meanings and e
by aasasd 8y ago
Thankfully Wiktionary imported wholesale the old Webster's dictionary (due partly to it being in the public domain). It has the same multitude of meanings and examples, including those from the article. On top, of course, it's updated for very modern language and with quotations from literature and journalism closer to us in time.
Which is why I have three different methods for quick lookup in Wiktionary in the desktop browser, and whipped up an extension for FF mobile to look up the selection with one tap.
Wiktionary's definition of ‘pathos’ omits the first variant from Webster's, however I'd say I've never seen it used in that meaning and it sounds more like the original Greek sense. (Though the relation to ‘ethos’ should probably be mentioned.)
Alas, for my love to Wiktionary, I'm having trouble learning less-familiar words with it, because I'm hoping to use Anki for that purpose. Turns out, a scroll of different meanings is no good as an answer on a flash card since I'm yet to learn just the most prominent one. All points to me importing a simpler dictionary like the Oxford, and manually fiddling with subtler meanings where I need them.
I'm yet to find a thesaurus which would be as comprehensive and usable, with notes on the differences in meanings. For now, I'm employing thesaurus.com plus Wiktionary lookups—the thesaurus somehow just has more stuff and shades of meanings than other online ones, including established names like Merriam-Webster.
- bryal 8y agoWiktionary is great! I'm interested in etymology, and my mind frequently wanders to thoughts like "I wonder what the origin of the 'pseudo-' prefix is." or "I wonder if the english word 'sea' and the swedish word 'sjö' are related - they seem quite similar.". More often than not, wikitionary has the answer - and a good, detailed one at that!
- aasasd 8y agoIn case Wiktionary fails, you can try https://www.etymonline.com https://www.etymonline.com ― it's especially has more info on figurative phrases instead of individual words, and has dates when a word or a phrase entered the usage (according to records).
- bryal 8y agoThat looks like a nice second source. I miss the IPA pronununciations though, among other things, so wikitionary will remain my go-to.
- roryokane 8y agoI looked for a way to install Wiktionary within the Dictionary app, similar to installing Webster’s Dictionary as described in this post. I found an Apple Stack Exchange question “How to add wiktionary as a source to the default dictionary.app?” at https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/122494/21473 https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/122494/21473, but some comments say that the suggested program conversion DictUnifier runs forever without finishing, so there may not be an easy method currently. I did find another program PyGlossary that might serve as a substitute, but I haven’t tried it.
- aasasd 8y agoSoftware errors tend to come and go for different users, so you could try DictUnifier anyway. I've successfully used it previously, though with a different dictionary.