Now, of course, most of us have the wonderful wide world of the web to eliminate the trouble of opening books. But manually opening a new tab, navigating to a dictionary, and then looking up the word is still way more than I want to have to do. Thank science, though, others saw my apparently common combination of desire to learn and laziness as a beacon, and decided to help.
DictionarySearch allows you to right click a word or phrase and look it up. To install the application, simply click the Add to Firefox button.
Then Install Now.
And Restart your browser.
You should get that funny old message that a new add-on has been installed. Close that.
And now, when you right click a term, you have the option of a Dictionary or Google search, which opens up conveniently in a new tab.
If you have a particular preference for a dictionary, it is possible to change dictionaries by clicking Tools, Addons.
And selecting the options for DictionarySearch.
You’ll then be taken to the following menu.
To some, this window may seem a little imposing, but it’s actually quite easy to customize. Say you’re a Dictionary.com snob. Change the text to something to your liking, but make sure you end it in a dollar sign in quotation marks, as this represents the user selected text (the bit you highlight).
Then simply paste the html address for dictionary.com into the URL box like so, once again followed by the $ sign, this time not in quotation marks.
And it will now be searchable when you right click too.
And you’ll be taken straight to your definition.
Not that we doubt your understanding of elephants. But just in case you didn’t know what one was, you’ll now be able to avoid the presence of a proverbial one in the room.
Download DictionarySearch from Mozilla Addons
