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I can see using a thesaurus while writing, if you are trying to write in a style not your own and want to convert the words you'd normally use to something else.
But a dictionary? That seems odd to me.
But dictionary while reading? To look up words they don't know. I seriously doubt most people know every single word in their native language. Beyond that, dictionaries are useful not just for definitions of words, but as a very simple Encyclopedia.
I was just reading a book that dealt with "Woolworth" paper. While I happened to be old enough to remember that Woolworth's was basically like Wal-Mart (cheap discount store) and thus the author presumably meant cheap, watermarkless paper, it might baffle a lot of people.
And for all I know, I might be wrong. Maybe it's a brand of paper in the UK. That's the other thing, English has at least 4 different types - American, British, Canadian, and Australian/New Zealand. While mostly we agree on names of objects, sometimes we have different ideas of what something is called. Good dictionaries will have meanings in different dialects.
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