Look up a word in the dictionary

When a word is almost the right one — you want another with the same sense, a rhyme for the end of a line, or the expressions it lives in — look it up without leaving your work. The dictionary opens in a drawer beside your text and gives, for the word you search, definitions, synonyms, antonyms, a lexical field, a word family, rhymes, homophones, expressions and figures of speech.

Open the dictionary

Use any of these:

  • press ⌘ + D;
  • open Tools → Dictionary;
  • select Dictionary in the tool palette on the left;
  • select a word in your work, right-click it and select Dictionary: the drawer opens with that word already searched.

To close it, press ⌘ + D again or select Dictionary in the palette. Esc leaves it open.

Search a word

  1. Type the word in Search a word... at the top of the drawer.
  2. Press Enter or select the search button beside the field.

The sections appear one by one as their answers arrive, with a spinner below them while Ilena is still looking. A lookup can take several seconds.

Read the results

Each section heading carries its count, for example Synonyms · 7. One section is open at a time: Definition opens with every new lookup, and selecting another heading opens it and closes the previous one. A section with a count of 0 is usually greyed out and cannot be opened. Rhymes is the exception: it can stay available at 0, and while a lookup is still running it can show 0 before its count arrives.

The dictionary drawer after searching “stone”: Definition open with numbered senses, then the other eight sections with their counts, those at 0 greyed out.
The drawer for “stone”: one section open, each heading with its count.
Definition
The word’s senses, numbered, each with an example sentence.
Synonyms, Antonyms, Lexical field
Words related to yours, each with short labels under it, such as an emotion or a register and a level from A1 to C2.
Rhymes
Rhyming words, each with its rhyme category under it.
Expressions
Set phrases containing the word, each with its meaning.
Figures of speech
Figures using the word, each with the device it rests on and its meaning.

Family and Homophones carry their count too, and open like the others when it is not 0.

Select a word in Synonyms or Rhymes to look it up in turn.

Unexpected results

A Did you mean line appears
The word you typed was taken for another one. For silense, the drawer shows the results for silence and Did you mean silence above them.
A section says Could not load this section.
This was seen when the search was not a word, for example qzxvbnm. A Retry this section button appears beside its heading.