Quote:
Originally Posted by Braid
I really wish they would add the option to "open dictionary" to menus on Kindles. Currently, if you are in a book, to access the dictionary you have to first look up a word on the page, and if you do this a lot, you'll end up with lots of words needlessly added to your vocabulary builder list.
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I take it you use Vocabulary Builder, but you want to be able to see definition without highlighting them (because that adds them to VB list)?
But even if you could open the dictionary directly you would need to type the word to lookup, navigate to the definition, and then work your way back to the book. This seems awkward.
You can in fact use Search to open the dictionary by typing the word to search for and choosing Search everywhere option. Dictionary is one of the things that you can jump to. But it’s a lot of steps.
There is already an Open Dictionary option, when you highlight a word or phrase: it is found in the ‘more options’ (3 dot) menu. This will open the dictionary where you can see the full definition. The only issue is that it also adds the word to VB.
If you use VB, you are always going to need to review the word list regularly and dispose of unwanted words.
Perhaps Amazon could add a Vocabulary Builder option to make adding words explicit (select word, then Add to Vocabulary Builder option would appear) rather than implicit as it is now. Implicit is probably good for young readers and for learning a new language, but for people who select words for other reasons most of the time, explicit would be better.
For learning a language, it would be nice if there were separate lists for each language.
I do like the idea of Vocabulary Builder but it could use a number of improvements, starting with making it a platform feature (available on Kindle apps as well as Kindle devices) and syncing between devices.