Dictionary.com

Pros

• App frontend to Dictionary.com
• Word of the day
• Quote of the day

Cons

• Website is just as good

Dictionary.com is a Windows app that provides convenient access to the popular dictionary website.

Dictionary.com is an online dictionary, which is based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary but adds other content from the American Heritage Dictionary, the Collins English Dictionary and other sources. This website is closely associated with Thesaurus.com and Reference.com, which is an online encyclopedia in the vein of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

This program provides an app frontend not just to the dictionary but to the entire site, which includes articles and a lot of other content. It was originally introduced as a Metro app, which are touchscreen-friendly and can run on either Windows RT or Windows 8. Although the Metro concept is no longer emphasized, the app has been updated to Windows 10 and is still touchscreen-friendly.

To use the core feature of the app, simply enter a word you want to look up in the top righthand corner of the screen and press enter. With almost no delay, the app will provide you the same extensive definition that you would receive on the site. You will also receive “nearby” words, which sometimes provides odd results but can be handy if you slightly misspelled a word to another actual word.

Dictionary.com results are very easy to read and the user interface is uncluttered overall. We do wish that synonyms, antonyms and such information were easier to access from a definition. On the other hand, we enjoy the Word of the Day and Quote of the Day feature that are prominent on the homepage. The homepage also provides you access to The Hot Word, which encompasses the six latest and hottest Dictionary.com articles; Trends, which lists the five most popular and five trendiest words; and Local Searches, which shows trending Dictionary.com searches in your immediate area.

Why not just use the Dictionary.com website? It is a good question and one for which we do not have an answer. Many Windows apps exist in this weird area where they are intriguing and yet do not offer enough for you to use them rather than the websites themselves. Still, this is an effective website to app translation that we would like to see improved and refined even more.

Pros

• App frontend to Dictionary.com
• Word of the day
• Quote of the day

Cons

• Website is just as good