Mac users: do you do the long-click on a word to pop up its definition?

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

Mac users: do you do the long-click on a word to pop up its definition? Do you also find the built-in dictionary to be a bit lackluster?

You can add your own dictionaries! Let me explain how to add the Webster's 1913 edition, which is one of my favorites.

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

I first read about this in the old (2014) blog post linked below. Those instructions worked for a long time, but they haven't been updated.
https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

If you are on a more recent version of macOS (Sequoia or Tahoe) here is how to do it.

First, go to this GitHub page and click on "websters-1913.dictionary.zip" to download a copy of the dictionary. It will probably show up in your downloads folder as a folder, rather than a .zip file.

https://github.com/websterParser/WebsterParser/releases

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

Now, open Finder. In the menubar, open the View menu and click the "Show View Options" item. Make sure the "Show Library folder" item near the bottom is checked. This will make your Library folder visible in your home directory.

In Finder, double-click the "Library" item in your home directory. If there is already a folder called "Dictionaries" then double-click that. If not, go to the File menu in the menubar, select "New Folder," and name the new folder "Dictionaries". Open that folder.

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

Wherever you downloaded the Webster's dictionary, you'll probably see a folder called "Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913).dictionary"

Drag that folder into your new ~/Library/Dictionaries folder. It will look something like this.

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

If your dictionary app is open, close it and restart it.

Go to Dictionary > Settings in the menubar.

You will see a long list of possible dictionaries in the settings window. Scroll down, click "Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)" to activate it, then drag it to the top to make it the default.

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

Now when you long click a word, or search for it in the app, you'll get something a little more interesting than the bland default resource.

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

You can do this with any dictionary or thesaurus (I think?) that has been converted to the correct format. The front page of that github project discusses this a bit, but I'm not sure what other resources are out there.

Does anyone have other good dictionaries they use this way?
https://github.com/websterParser/WebsterParser

[mcnees@mastodon.social]

There appear to be some tools out there to convert from different formats, but it sounds like the results can be sloppy. So I'm very curious to hear if there are other examples that have been converted with care, with results that are as pleasing as the 1913 Webster's.

[clonezone@mastodon.social]

@mcnees There's a project that adds Emojipedia to Dictionary.app, blessed by Emojipedia itself: https://emojipedia.org/app

References a GUI application for managing dictionaries: https://dictionaries.io/

[crovanian@mastodon.social]

@mcnees that is one hell of a good entry! I wasn’t expecting a TIL about alchemy from a 1913 dictionary entry about quintessence!