I Have a New Favorite Dictionary App
What's that you say? You don't have a preferred dictionary app? Well, shame on you. I certainly do, and until recently, I hadn't even considered its relative worth. But I was shocked to learn that there was one doing it better.
A little backstory: I wouldn't say I overuse my dictionary app on my phone, but I definitely turn to it fairly often. Sometimes, I think about the standard questionnaire for Why Is This Interesting's Media Diet Monday when they routinely ask, "What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?" and I'm like, "It might just be this dictionary app."
Until recently, I'd been using the Merriam-Webster dictionary app. And it's fine. Truly, it had rarely failed me.
But I started reading Colum McCann's Twist after hearing the author on The Book Review podcast from The New York Times.
Pocket Casts
I'm really enjoying the book, by the way. It's about an Irish author-journalist who's been assigned to write a story about the ships that fix the cable-breaks that happen deep under the ocean. The head of the cable-repair crew is another Irishman with an air of mystery about him. It also has a large part of its action in Cape Town, South Africa, so I was excited to hear a talented writer describe a place that I'd actually been.
Anyway, that part's not important (although, if you get a chance, I'd say read it). Not that far into the book, I came across a word I didn't recognize: saudade.
No worries. Pulled out my handy-dandy Merriam-Webster and — wait, what? "No match found"? Pft. Fine. Whatever. At that moment, I Googled the word, and I discovered a lovely definition.
"Saudade" is a Portuguese and Galician word with no direct English translation, but it generally refers toa deep emotional state of nostalgic or melancholic longing for something or someone that is absent, or for a past that no longer exists.
Onward I charge, newly educated on one unfamiliar term. Then, but a few pages further, I came to another word I didn't know: phrontistery.
No worries. Pulled out my handy-dandy Merriam-Webster and thought, "Now's the time for redemption." But no. No match found.
What the actual hell?
But fear not. Because I found the answer to this one in an app. The Oxford Dictionary app, to be precise.
(Oh, by the way, the definition of "phrontistery" is: "a school or educational institution.")
I know, I know. It's not some newfangled upstart; it's one of the O.G.s. True enough, but it had both words right there. Ask and ye shall receive. And right then and there, I had a new favorite dictionary app.
Does the free version have so many ads as to make it nearly unbearable to use? Yes. But does it rise to the occasion when you really need it? Also yes.
A good dictionary app on your phone is a game-changer. You don't have to be one who works with words for a living like I do. It's still just a cool thing to experience: Run across a word you don't know and there's an app for that. Learning a new word is a demonstrable closing of a knowledge gap. It's immediate, and it's satisfying.
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