Description from extension meta
Highlights rare English dictionary words and idioms on web pages. Facilitates English language learning and expands your vocabulary.
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Description from store
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
- (2020-01-02) 金明: 从google翻译到中文的连接有错误，能否修改下 https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=zh-CN&text=myword
- (2019-12-10) xiaopeng Liu: 很好，但是发现有的单词没有标注且自己不会，这是怎么回事呢，如果可以自定义标注那个等级的单词就太好了。比如，我想标注6级大纲词汇。
- (2019-12-01) fantasio live: ok
- (2019-11-10) Tuan Tran: i really love this extension. it's grate method to remember words by repeatedly. i do appreciate if you you add one more function like this extention woking -------------------- (Highlight This: finds and marks words) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/highlight-this-finds-and/fgmbnmjmbjenlhbefngfibmjkpbcljaj ----------- so when i read goolgle news on the web page, i can easily get a quick looking back the words i've learned and memorize them again by repeatedly (deep learning)
- (2019-10-27) 邓舒: 能否添加一个功能，让用谷歌浏览器打开的PDF文件也可以使用插件
- (2019-10-18) Running Cheese: Thanks for the great extension, but pls update the firefox version, it was 2 years ago since the first upload!
- (2019-09-21) Hue Thien: Goood
- (2019-07-22) Carl Wang: 你好， 导出来的单词本貌似有问题。请问可以修复吗？谢谢。
- (2019-07-21) Sajjad Sedaqat: It's Great
- (2019-06-21) Ergo: it's the most useful extension i've ever use!!! thank you
- (2019-04-30) Will: 超级喜欢！
- (2019-01-16) 昭明文选: 能再加一个词汇列表吗？ wordlist1 不用颜色标注 这个放已经掌握的单词 wordlist2 用红色标注 这个放正在学习的单词 不在列表中的 用绿色标注 表示不认识的单词 这样一弄，就完美了。
- (2018-12-18) Gokhan Ozaslan: If it's possible to the extension will work on the youtube captions, then would be excellent. Thanks...
- (2018-12-18) gong situ: 超赞 感谢作者,看代码中.
- (2018-12-15) Andy Chan: icon shows an err which might means errors, however i dont know anything wrong with it
- (2018-11-24) Xinyu Li: 这个真的很棒，但是我通过添加url打开本地的词典应用查词时，总会打开一个空白的页面。怎么才能直接访问url呢？（It's really great.However ,when I want to open the dictionary app in my computer by url protocol,it will always open a blank tab yet.Could you please help me to find a way to open the local application without a new blank tab? (i find the code --- chrome.tabs.create()；---in your js script. may be i can mod this to sovle my problem,but i never learn js and chrome api,could you give me some advice?)
- (2018-11-23) James Ding: I'm Chinese, this extension is very helpful for me.thinks :)
- (2018-10-14) Raiden Roy: Your extension is missing out a crucial feature. read my suggestion in the support page.
- (2018-10-05) Zack Liu: I really enjoy using this extension. Extremely useful for ESL learners. If it can support collocation, it will be much more perfect. A little improvement could be adding another color highlighting for the words in the vocabulary list.
- (2018-09-30) 给4颗星，如果能在突出显示的单词后自动添加注释，就再加一颗星
- (2018-09-26) jemmy cho: I like Words Discoverer, but it is not working properly in the latest Chrome version 69.0.3497.100. Hope you fix it. Thanks
- (2018-09-22) hosein jozi: hi i use this good extension but many days ago it broke down , in background window this error showed :because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: "script-src https://*.google.com 'unsafe-eval'". https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/contentSecurityPolicy#JSExecution https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23216884/chrome-extension-content-security-policy-directive-error
- (2018-09-19) Shanfeng Hao: Chrome更新后好像不能用了 It seems that the extension can’t be used after Chrome updated.
- (2018-09-16) hello YZF: 非常棒的
- (2018-09-12) The Analyst: Many thanks for developing this application, it is so great.
Latest issues
- (2019-11-14, v:2.10.2) Saro: Can't login to google (using synchronise now)
When I go to the extension's setting page and click on "Synchronise now" a pop-up appears and then I click on my google account then allow the extension to have access to my google drive and in the end, click on "alow" to finish the process. But the pop-up vanishes and under "Synchronise Now" sth appears in red: Error: More than one object found for query: name = 'Words Discoverer Sync' and trashed = false and appProperties has { key='wdfile' and value='1' } The next time I click on Synchronise Now nothing happens (no pop-up or anything) and the error is still there. - (2019-11-10, v:2.10.2) Tuan Tran: suggestion - add highlight word for many purpose: idioms, phrase verb, new words...
i really love this extension. it's grate method to remember words by repeatedly. i do appreciate if you you add one more function like this extention woking -------------------- (Highlight This: finds and marks words) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/highlight-this-finds-and/fgmbnmjmbjenlhbefngfibmjkpbcljaj ----------- so when i read goolgle news on the web page, i can easily get a quick looking back the words i've learned and memorize them again by repeatedly (deep learning) - (2019-03-28, v:2.10.1) KENRICK SOUND: THANKS SO MUCH
IT'S SO NICE. IT'S REALLY NICE FOR REMEMBER VOCABULARY. I HOPE YOU BIG HIT MUST!! - (2018-11-25, v:2.10.1) suggestion
translation is not convenient.Because it always opens a new page. - (2018-11-19, v:2.10.1) Bergg Uscha: repeated highlights are probably unnecessary
take Wiki for example. the same word 'lexical' in the article 'Lexical Semantics' is used more often than others. But because of it the highlight defeats the purpose and makes the vocabs list impenetrable. would it be possible to skip the repetitions and just highlight first occurrances to reduce the number of highlights? - (2018-11-04, v:2.10.1) Firas Mohamed: Word definition
Could be more useful if the popup can include the definition as well. Aesthetics features should be improved; the colors are not appealing. The idea of the creator is in fact noble. - (2018-10-14, v:2.10.1) Raiden Roy: Feature Request: I have a way to improve your highlight word feature.
You are about to read some bad English and I am really sorry about it I am not a native English speaker. I am glad you made this extension thank you for your hard work. I like the Idea behind your extension i.e. learn the words which you as a user didn't know before but by your way, I am 100% sure that I will save it and that's just it. e.g. kinda like you see a really good website that will come really useful later on and then you made a bookmark for it and then you do the same thing with other websites too till it becomes a mess. & then you realize you don't have the time to see all of those websites ¯\_ಠ⍘ಠ_/¯ but still somewhere in your mind, in your heart, you still believe and hope that you will be able to see all those websites later on but that's only hope my friend we know the truth behind it and what makes it funny is even realizing it won't make much of a difference. ಥ﹏ಥ Do you remember your own extension description, let me just copy paste some parts for you ⦁"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." They still won't go back to check the word that has been saved by your extension. it is too time-consuming, too much of a drag, it's troublesome. You made this extension to explore the words but by your way, we will just ignore it. we won't improve at all because to completely explore and learn the word a person need to see a word multiple times a day & their meaning too this is a crucial process of learning. As of now, your extension lets the user save their own words but by this way, many users won't even go back to check the word that they have saved by their own hands (that's including me.) let's say I managed to find a word that I didn't know before. now what happens is I see it's meaning by your extension and then I save it. now I will become relax that I have saved this word & now I will be able to learn it (that's how you think by this way we will be able to increase our vocabulary) but as the time goes-by eventually I will forget about those words. In my mind, I will probably tell myself to do it sometime later this is what we call procrastination. This is a really bad thing and it happens to me 99% of the time. **Basically, your extension is telling me to procrastinate.** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To solve this problem I have a suggestion I want you to improve your highlighting feature to make it a little bit more robust to improve the learning process. What I want from you is a word replacer similar to this extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jkgogmboalmaijfgfhfepckdgjeopfhk for me, this kind of approach works really well. What you need to do is whenever user adds a word for e.g. "wanton" your extension should automatically find all of the words that relate to "wanton" ("wanton" means deliberate, willful, malicious, malevolent, spiteful, vicious, wicked, cruel) (and also let the user add some words of its own to the meaning lists) now what's needs to be done is whenever user surf the internet for e.g. if in google search page there is a meaning that matches "wanton" your extension should automatically replace that word with wanton and whenever the user wants to see what actually written there, they just need to hover over the highlighted word which is "wanton" and the user will be able to see what was initially written there. By this, I could see the word that I want to learn and remember, by replacing similar words or phrases with the one I want to learn. This way, my brain subconsciously learns the new word without any effort at all. thank you for reading. - (2018-09-24, v:2.10.0) Yi Shen: can't work
Seems that it doesn't work on chrome 69. Would you please fix that? Thanks a lot. - (2018-09-22, v:2.10.0) Vĩnh Đào Văn: what should i do ?
Please help. after update chrome, add on doesn't word and i have capture. https://ibb.co/fPGgEz this great add on. thanks very much. please fix it. - (2018-08-28, v:2.10.0) How to add Merriam Webster ELL dictionary as an option?
Thanks- tried adding but didn't have the right link format