What is the best way to look up unknown words on windows 11?

By Mert Ozer, 22 July, 2024

Forum
Windows

Hello folks!
I hope everything is going well. I have a question regarding finding the definitions for words on Windows 11. I am preparing for the IELTS, an English proficiency test for my college applications. Since I'm not a native English speaker, I have to prove my ability to speak and write in English. I take a lot of practice tests, which means I encounter many uncommon words. I need something handy to look up words rather than going to a website every time.

When I researched, I found that Microsoft Edge provides this feature, but I need to select the text with my mouse and leave the cursor there. Since NVDA doesn't support the native selection mode for Edge, I cannot do that. I tried to use the pass-through function by pressing NVDA+F2, but that didn't work.

What is your go-to option when you need to see the meanings really fast? Thank you so much. Have a good one!

Options

Comments

By SeasonKing on Tuesday, July 23, 2024 - 10:09

I would suggest look in to auto-hot-key. You can creat your own keyboard shortcut, which copies the selected word, launches a browser window with the search engine of your choise, and searches the query "Define: your selected word".
It's a bit involved process, but I bet you would be able to find pre-made auto-hot-key scripts to achieve the same by just googling.

By Diego on Tuesday, July 23, 2024 - 10:09

If you use NVDA, on the add-on store there an add-on called dictionaries

By Mert Ozer on Tuesday, July 23, 2024 - 10:09

Thank you all for the suggestions. Searching the phrase "define:" followed by the expression works well. I will also try writing an AutoHotkey script for my own use. I have tried the NVDA add-on, and while it works well, I wish it showed the search results as I type, like a combo box where you can type text in.

By WellF on Tuesday, July 23, 2024 - 10:09

It has good dictionaries, the UI is quite simple and you can assign a keyboard shortcut to search a selected word. I find it very useful for me as a non native student.

By Mert Ozer on Tuesday, July 23, 2024 - 10:09

Looking at your comment -- it seems interesting and useful. I will try and let you know what I thought; thank you very much!

By peter on Tuesday, July 23, 2024 - 10:09

There is a "ResearchIt" function built into JAWS. To find the definition of a word, do the following:

1. Highlight the word
2. Hit JAWSKey+space followed by the letter R. That gets you into the ResearchIt dialog.
3. If you hit enter from here, the definition of the word will pop up. Doing a dictionary search is the default.
4. If you tab a few times, you will find that you can also quickly find other information that might be of interest from different categories. These include:

List view
Wiktionary (Primary)
1 of 11
Area code lookup
2 of 11
BBC Top News Stories
3 of 11
Bookshare Book Search
4 of 11
CNN Headline News Stories
5 of 11
Convert Currency
6 of 11
Flight Info Lookup
7 of 11
Fox News Stories
8 of 11
Technology News from CNet
9 of 11
Time Search
10 of 11
Wikipedia
11 of 11
Hope that helps.

--Pete