The iPhone App Review : iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad App News & Reviews

Price: $4.99    Score: 8/10    By José Ralat Maldonado

This audio-enabled dictionary could give free reference applications a run for their money, though at a cost. WordWeb Software’s Audio dictionary – WebWord American English offers 285,000 entries, including phrases and derived forms as well as 225,000 word-sense definitions. It also gives users homonyms, synonyms and words often confused with the search in question. Furthermore, no Internet connection is required to access the audio.

Via the X-Ref button at the bottom of the screen of entries, users can obtain entrée to complementary online material, such as Wikipedia, both mobile and full, and Google, as well as other reference apps, such as New Oxford American Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary of English (the latter must be downloaded for access).

Other WordWeb dictionary features include:

• 70,000 usage examples and audio pronunciations
• 90,000 text pronunciations
• Fast pattern-matching search (*, ?, vowel and consonant)
• Customizable search options (case, derived forms, etc.)
• American, British and international vocabulary
• Shake for random word search
• Dictionary updates
• Full coverage of American, British, Canadian, Australasian and Asian English
• Bookmarks, recent and random words

One pitfall is that Audio dictionary – WebWord American English is painfully slow to download, a common problem with reference apps. For those not interested in the audio component, a free non-audio version is available on iTunes.

Audio dictionary – WebWord American English offers users not only another reference option, but also the advantage of supplemental resources and is a welcome and useful addition to my app library.

Audio dictionary – WebWord American English requires iPhone OS 2.0 or later and is compatible with both the iPhone and iPod Touch.