Word Discoverer: Expand your vocabulary
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Highlights rare English dictionary words and idioms on web pages. Facilitates English language learning and expands your vocabulary.
Word Discoverer highlights rare English dictionary words, idioms and proverbs on web pages.
It helps non-native English learners to discover new expressions while they are browsing the Internet.
Highlighting of rare words is useful because some people do not even notice vaguely known words, especially when these words are not critical for understanding of the text that they read. One possible explanation of this strange and pertexing effect is that mind of a reader is concentrated on understanding the meaning and structure of the text, and after finishing reading a sentence many readers won't go back to check the meaning of unfamiliar words that they have already forgot. E.g. some readers will forget to check the definition of word "pertexing" from the previous sentence which, in fact, doesn't exist. And even if you did check it, you still can try this extension, it highlights only real English dictionary words and idioms =)
*NOTE* On installation Words Discoverer shows scary warning that it can "read and change all you data on the websites your visit" - don't worry, Words Discoverer will not send any of your data anywhere. In fact it doesn't even talk to any servers, all highlighting logic is performed locally in your browser, so if you have some saved html files to read, you can even use Words Discoverer offline. The source code is here if you are curious: https://github.com/mechatroner/aided_reading
Words Discoverer is free forever, open source, and it has no ads.
Here are some features of the extension:
Words Discoverer is better than "Word-of-the-day" type of programs because new words are highlighted in context of the text that you read, which is a good motivating factor to finally check the definitions and learn these words (or idioms).
Depending on your vocabulary size, you can adjust frequency threshold of highlighted words e.g. skip 25% most common English words, and highlight all the rest. There's no way to set such threshold for idioms and proverbs, the extension can either highlight all of them or none.
Words Discoverer can operate in two modes:
In the first (default) mode it highlight all Internet pages except sites that you add to a special list. E.g. you may not want to highlight anything from youtube.
In the second mode Words Discoverer highlights only sites from another special list - your favorite English sites. By default this list is empty, so unless you add there something (e.g. facebook, wikipedia, bbc.com), it won't highlight anything at all.
Currently there are ~50K words and ~1600 idioms in the extension's dictionary. If you're interested you can look at them on project's github page.
Here some example of idioms from the dictionary: "brand new"(everyone knows this one), "bucket list", "moral high ground", "baby shower"(it is not a shower for babies), "money laundering", "jigsaw puzzle", "veil of ignorance". And there are many others.
If you known definition of a highlighted word, you can add it to your personal vocabulary and it won't be detected any more. When you add a word it is converted to normal form for your vocabulary e.g. "dogs -> dog". You can always view your vocabulary or save it as a text file.
By selecting text of a word (or idiom) and right clicking on it you can either add the word to your vocabulary or view it's definition in one of 4 online dictionaries using context menu references. And, of course, you can also use Words Discoverer in combination with your favorite dictionary app (e.g. "Google dictionary" extension)
Interesting fact: most adult native English speakers know 20000-35000 words, so it is totally possible to eventually add them all to your vocabulary file.
Contributors:
github user XQDD - Text-To-Speech idea and implementation
Latest reviews
this is the best!
Very useful, and by highlighting rare words it actually helps locate key words when skimming. But it needs a feature to be able to exclude some websites, because it seems to be messing up with some websites' night mode e.g. reddit, google colab etc.
This is used to be most useful extension on google chrome...but is not working anymore.. Not highlighting any words...?
Extremely useful but I really wish it can open the dictionaries links in a small pop up window instead of a new tab.
希望能直接把翻译标在单词后面
highly recommended
highly recommended
Outstanding; so useful for teaching English in conjunction with translation and dictionary extensions :)
Outstanding; so useful for teaching English in conjunction with translation and dictionary extensions :)
Cool Extension but it doesn't work in Vivaldi browser
Cool Extension but it doesn't work in Vivaldi browser
很方便，很好用，加油！ 要是有更多选项就更好了，比如： 1，在读音按钮上，直接显示国际音标; 2，要有“未掌握词汇表”，这样有增有减，长期使用，能得到精确的“个人词汇量表”； 3，增加“阅读模式”。
Thank you for this great tool!
Thank you for this great tool!
nice tool
nice tool
请问下， 有没有屏蔽的词汇清单？
Very useful. Simple to use. It would be better if the dectection of phrases and fixed expression can be improved.
Very useful. Simple to use. It would be better if the dectection of phrases and fixed expression can be improved.
能直接显示词典就完美了，不要再装别的词典了
不错，但是不常用词库有点奇怪，有许多想要的没有标红，地名等却标红了，不想要那种无用的地名知识啊！
It can be under the word display Chinese?
It can be under the word display Chinese?
just what i was looking for. it would be nice if the saved vocabularies include some details like from what site they were added, date of addition...
just what i was looking for. it would be nice if the saved vocabularies include some details like from what site they were added, date of addition...
不过，但edge中无法同步到google drive
The app is simple and useful. The UI of this plugin can be modernized. But in this way it meets my needs. Thank you so much.
The app is simple and useful. The UI of this plugin can be modernized. But in this way it meets my needs. Thank you so much.
nice work
nice work
very good but I can't not sync in Microsoft edge!!!
very good but I can't not sync in Microsoft edge!!!
Great tool! There is a problem that sync err when using Microsoft Edge. It can not popup login google account window. Hopefully fix this issue. Microsoft Edge Version 92.0.902.55 (Official build) (64-bit) Thanks a lot.
Great tool! There is a problem that sync err when using Microsoft Edge. It can not popup login google account window. Hopefully fix this issue. Microsoft Edge Version 92.0.902.55 (Official build) (64-bit) Thanks a lot.
I like the idea of this extension but sometimes it highlights words like ''swimsuit'' and ''sunglasses", which are easy words. I thought this was more for difficult words, which kinda makes me want to uninstall the extension. Is it possible to have different settings for different needs?
I like the idea of this extension but sometimes it highlights words like ''swimsuit'' and ''sunglasses", which are easy words. I thought this was more for difficult words, which kinda makes me want to uninstall the extension. Is it possible to have different settings for different needs?
I like this extension a lot but as someone that often has to work on separate computers, the lack of a unifying account that saves all your words cross devices is very frustrating. This could easily be solved with allowing us to create an account on a website that the extension can ask us to log into when we sign into a different chrome browser. If this feature is added, it's 5 stars for me.
I like this extension a lot but as someone that often has to work on separate computers, the lack of a unifying account that saves all your words cross devices is very frustrating. This could easily be solved with allowing us to create an account on a website that the extension can ask us to log into when we sign into a different chrome browser. If this feature is added, it's 5 stars for me.
i want to save my word list and words can conect with dictionaries that i want? May you allow user to write in list? and add number with them Can you increase the character limit? (100 current characters)
i want to save my word list and words can conect with dictionaries that i want? May you allow user to write in list? and add number with them Can you increase the character limit? (100 current characters)
Excellent!
Excellent!
太棒了，好喜欢
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much!
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much!
词汇列表的排序可以按添加时间排序更好，现在按首字母先后顺序排序影响记忆结构。
Doesn't work in Vivaldi browser
Doesn't work in Vivaldi browser
建议添加一个快捷键, 相比单纯用鼠标可以大大提高使用效率
感觉很厉害啊，哈哈哈哈
