Dictionaire: Keeping you high-brow in a low-brow society.

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In my opinion, everyone should have (at least) one of the many dictionary apps available from iTunes installed on their iPhone or iPod Touch. They are free, they help expand your vocabulary, and they can help you out with instantaneous spell-checking.

I’ll be honest, Dictionaire is the first and only dictionary program I have installed. There are quite a few on the iTunes Store, and I picked this one at random. Once I installed it, I saw that it did everything a dictionary should do, so I kept it and ended my search. But if you are a true wordsmith, or a true lexiconophile, perhaps you should try some of the other apps. Leave us a comment if you have a personal favorite.

Active "search narrowing" makes finding definitions quick.

What I like best about Dictionaire is its simplicity. Usually, when I need to search for a word I just need a quick definition. Dictionaire gives me that without over-complicating things, making me sort through the root of the word and all of its variations that a doorstop dictionary would have. This is also a weakness, however, as there are no pronunciation keys. Also, if you need to know the etymology of words you look up, find another app or dig out the big book.

The search engine is very effective as well, giving you a list of words as you type so you can stop when you see the word you’re looking for. This also helps with quick spell-checks, as you can type in a few characters and scroll until you find the word.

However, what sucks about this is that it takes up a lot of screen real estate, and once you’ve select a word, the search bar–for an unknown and poorly conceived reason–stays up. This is a severe annoyance; it forces constant scrolling to see the word’s definitions in the tiny display area at the bottom of the screen.

I’m sure we’ll review another dictionary program in the future, but it probably won’t be me. Dictionaire is exactly what it says it is: a quick pocket dictionary. More features would be great, but whenever I’m really in need of a dictionary, it’s usually to solve a simple spelling problem.

If you knows of a better dictionary app, let us know. We’d love to do a comparison post based on your feedback.