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System Software Notes

Dictionary shortcut surprise

See this post for the pointer on command-control-D

I put the mouse over the word “secular”, not highlighted, and did the command-control-d lookup.
What I got back was the definition of “secular humanist”, which was entirely unexpected, but entirely correct.
The sentence contained “…was a secular humanist whose fervent…”

If I highlight secular I get that definition. That’s the only way to not have it show you “secular humanist”.
How nicely context sensitive it is.

It is also broken on such words as bête noire and other words that have diacritical markings. The dictionary lookup (shortcut version) won’t find them, whereas typing “bete” into the lookup box in the Dictionary application will provide the word with the diacritcal mark in the list. Kind of the long way to get there.

7 replies on “Dictionary shortcut surprise”

its a global shortcut, highlight a word and press cmd+ctrl+d

I like this command, but it doesn’t work in firefox or java apps. Does work in Safari.