A dictionary is something you don’t need till you need it, then it’s a scramble. They should actually be used more often but folks just make up a word or use a word incorrectly. With a iPad always in hand and a dictionary available to anyone, it is pretty easy to look up a word and move on. Dictionaries are really a ‘must have app’ for iPads at work, home and students.
There are some very big names in the Dictionary area of iPad apps. All with a variety of options to make their’s worthy of your money. Till you see the value, perhaps a free version is a good first step.
Two that have found their way onto our iPads is Tiny Dict and Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary HD. The simple and quid and the not so simple yet very feature heavy.
Tiny Dict is a universal app, though it is free, it still means you only need one app to run on both your iPad and iPhone. The biggie for us is that it works 100% offline, which can be a huge win when your being mobile and can’t always trust you have a wireless signal. As the developer says, “it has a lot” of definitions. We love that phrase. That aside, Tiny Dict has so far hit all the words our busy day has thrown at us.
Next up is Merriam-Webster. As you would imagine coming from a major dictionary company, it is very robust in features with encouragements to purchase the full version through in-app ads. The Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary is a larger download and is iPad only. It does require a Internet connection for much of it’s functionality, but those are nice features to have.
* 100,000 words and phrases
* Word usage examples
* Over 22,000 idioms, verbal collocations, and commonly used phrases
* Voice Search
* Audio Pronunciations
If you pay for the upgraded version you loose the advertisements and get a set of 160,000 usage examples
