Back in the days of NeXT, there was a bundled application called Digital Librarian. And as AppleInsider describes in this article, “Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Dictionary 2.0”,
Included with the system were the complete works of Shakespeare, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus.
With the new Dictionary.app, you have the ability to view other dictionaries, as well as all of Wikipedia — I’ve already been using this capability a ton. Combined with using the keyboard shortcuts under the “Search” menu, searching multiple places is very easy and quick.
An item that might go overlooked is in the “Go” menu — “Front/Back Matter.” Choosing that while the Dictionary is selected reveals various meta items like the people associated with making the included New Oxford American Dictionary, prefaces, introductions, etc. But there’s actually a massive amount of additional resources here. Check it out:
- American Voices by William A.Kretzschmar, Jr.
- How to Read an Etymology by Anatoly Liberman
- Key to the Pronunciations
- Key to the Abbreviations
Ready Reference
- Language Guide
- Rules of English: Understanding Grammar
- Guide to Spelling
- Guide to Capitalization and Punctuation
- Words: Making the Right Choices
- Clichés
- Proofreader’s Marks
- The History of English
- States of the United States of America
- Presidents of the United States of America
- Declaration of Independence
- Constitution of the United States of America
- Countries of the World
- Chemical Elements
- Standard Weights and Measures with Metric Equivalents and Conversions
- Metric Weights and Measures with Standard Equivalents and Conversions
- Alphabets
Of course, in our always-online culture nowadays, all of this stuff is available via your favorite web browser. But if you happen to be offline (horror of horrors), these could be very useful.
