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Daily Trick 15. Quick Dictionary
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Having English as my second language, there are many words that I don't know. As a result, I will need to open Dictionary most of the time.
If everytime I need to launch Dictionary.app to see the word definition, I will waste my precious time and decrease my productivity.
However, thanks to my Mac, with a simple keystrokes Ctrl-Cmd-D a quick dictionary pane will appear right in front of your eyes. If you failed to call the quick dictionary, it's possible that you've previously changed the shortcut. To change the shortcut back, follow these steps:
You can click on the thumbnail for larger view.
- Open Apple → System Preferences
- Go to Keyboard & Mouse and choose Keyboard Shortcuts section
- Search for Look up in Dictionary and change the shortcut back
Unfortunately, this feature is not supported by some applications, like Firefox.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Dictionary
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9 Comments
Claudio
I went into my sys-pref >keyboard & mouse> and chose keyboard shortcuts and it's still as it was since I got this machine ( Ctrl-Cmd-D) but it's not invoking Dictionary. Any suggestions?
Wendy
Try it with Safari to see whether it's working or not.
Guillaume Laforge
I'm using a French Mac OS X, with a French keyboard, and everything. I never changed the shortcut, but it seems it's never even been there (no Ctrl-Cmd-D ever, nor registered for another application). And even if I set such a shortcut, I don't seem to be able to invoke it (from Safari for instance). But also, the fact is that when you add a new shortcut, you have to enter the application (easy), the shortcut (easy again), and... the title of the menu item corresponding to the shortcut you wanna add. But... there's no menu item with a title like "lookup" or anything like that. So perhaps I'm not setting a correct menu item name. Anyhow, I've never managed to make that trick work so far, it's a pity :-(
Stefano
If you want you can have access to the dictionary from the widgets (F12 on my macbook). ciao ciao
Julie
'Quicktionary' would be a nice pun right here.
Julie
@Claudio Did you highlight the word before pressing the shortcut? I know I tried to invoke the Quick Dictionary without doing so and nothing happened.
Jeff B
I've used this many times, but noticed something odd. The Quick Dictionary apparently doesn't use the same dictionary file as the built-in dictionary/thesaurus widget in Dashboard. There are times when I've gotten 'no result' in the quick version, but the same word comes up in the widget. (sorry, no examples that I remember) Any thoughts or fixes for this?
Linux Geek
A different dictionary? Hmm, that's weird.
Melebius
I think the easiest way is to write the searched word to Spotlight.
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