COBUILD E-Dict CD-ROM

To order your copy of the E-Dict CD-ROM for only $69 contact Athelstan Online at orders@athel.com

Available for Windows on IBM or compatible PC.

Exceptionally clear presentation, user friendly definitions, based on detailed corpus research
Clear pronunciation of over 65,000 words and phrases spoken by native English speakers
Search on keywords, phrasal verbs, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, grammar, definitions and examples
Search using * and ? wildcards to find words when you are not sure of the spelling
Near-matching moves to the closest spelling word
Add your own user notes for self-study
Allows you to customize the user interface
Compatible with most leading Windows word processors
History feature tracks recently viewed entries
Detailed on-line Help
FREE demo CD-ROM of E-Dict available

A Quick Guided Tour of E-Dict...

Phrases and Idioms Easily Located

Here is the main screen of E-Dict. The user has selected the Keywords index at the top of the left-hand area of the screen. This index is the main index for searching for words and phrases in the dictionary.

The user has entered the word "foul" and the display shows all the words phrases in which "foul" is a key element. Notice that several idioms and compounds are shown. The user has selected "foul play" from the list on the left hand side and the entry for that phrase is displayed in the text area on the right.

The Toolbar down the right-hand side contains buttons for more detailed searching of the dictionary, looking up cross-references, searching within long entries, printing out entries, adding user notes, and so on.

Focus on Different Parts of Speech

This screen shows how the user has selected the Adjectives index and has entered the search string "*ly" in order to see which adjectives in English end in "-ly". Usually, words ending in "-ly" in English are adverbs, but here we see part of the list showing adjectives which end in "-ly". These might be confusing words for learners of English because they expect that all words ending in "-ly" in English will be adverbs. The user has selected the word "beastly" from the list and the entry is displayed on the right.

Exceptionally Clear Layout of Entries

Here is a closer look at the layout of the entries in E-Dict. The definitions are written in the very clear COBUILD full-sentence style. The red diamond symbols at the top of the entry indicate the overall frequency of this word in English based on the huge Bank of English computer corpus. If you click on the red diamonds, an explanation of the 1 to 5 frequency bands is displayed.

Pronunciation

You can click on the loudspeaker icons to hear the different forms of the word ("train", "trains", "training", etc.) spoken aloud. Over 65000 pronunciations are given on the CD-ROM, spoken clearly by native speakers. British English pronunciations are given for most of the words, except where a word is primarily used in American English, when an American voice speaks the pronunciation.

The software automatically plays the correct pronunciation where there are different pronunciations for the same word used as a noun, verb, or adjective. For example, "import" can be a noun or a verb, but it is pronounced differently in each case. Clicking the loudspeaker icon at the noun sense of "import" calls up the noun pronunciation.

Click for Immediate Grammar Information

The label "V-ERG" is a grammatical label for the word "train". Click on this blue label and you will see the full form of the word class label.

E-Dict screen shot #3

If you want more explanation, then simply use the on-line Help index, enter the word "ERG" or "ergative" and an explanation of the terminology will be presented.

E-Dict screen shot #4

You will also notice the E-Dict Grammar button icon alongside some of the example sentences in the entry. You can click on these icons to see how the grammatical structure relating to the headword is illustrated in the example. If the user clicks on the grammar icon alongside the example "Psychiatrists initially train as doctors." then a pop-up window shows the grammatical pattern.

E-Dict screen shot #5

Focus on Grammar

The E-Dict CD-ROM also gives you a powerful way to study the grammar of modern English. Take a look at the screen below:

E-Dict screen shot #6

Here you can see that the user has selected the Grammar index in order to look for some specific grammar information. If the user enters the search string "* no cont" they will immediately see a list in the left-hand column of all the grammar codes in the dictionary which mark verbs which cannot be used in the continuous form (e.g. "I am hoping to go to college next year" shows the verb "hope" used in the continuous form.) There are many verbs in English which cannot be used with the continuous form in certain senses or contexts. The user has clicked on the VB: no cont grammar label and on the right-hand side of the screen pops up a list of all the verbs in the dictionary which, in one of their senses, cannot be used in the continuous form.