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@jsomers
Created May 19, 2014 01:42
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How to make the Webster's 1913 your default Kindle dictionary

How to make the Webster's 1913 your default Kindle dictionary

  1. Download a Kindle-compatible version of the dictionary here. Unzip the .rar archive.

  2. Get the "Send to Kindle" program on your computer. Here's the link for the Mac.

  3. Right-click your recently downloaded (unzipped) dictionary file, and click the "Send to Kindle" menu item. It will arrive on your Kindle shortly.

  4. Once the dictionary has arrived, go to your settings -- on my newish paperwhite, it's at Home > Settings > Device Options > Language and Dictionaries > Dictionaries > English. Choose the Webster's 1913.

  5. Voila! Every time you highlight a word, you should get Webster's definition.

@christiangenco
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On my Kindle 6 inch e ink, to install the new dictionary I just needed to drag and drop Websters Dictionary 1913_ver21-stnd.prc into my Kindle's documents/ directory and set it to the default in Settings / Dictionaries.

@emh
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emh commented Jun 4, 2014

In the iOS Kindle app, after the Dictionary has been delivered to the device, open a book and highlight a word to define. There will be a button in the bottom left of the definition that when clicked will let you select a new dictionary. Webster's 1913 should be in the list.

@raamdev
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raamdev commented Jun 21, 2014

Awesome. Thanks!

@guoyilou
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.prc file format is not supported when I tried to send the file to my kindle through email. Maybe I can work around that by using USB.

@erik-nyc
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erik-nyc commented Jul 24, 2017

One thing to note is that looking up words using the default dictionary (New American Oxford) is "smarter", while flipping to Webster's is a bit "dumber". Looking up different verb forms of a word won't produce results in Webster's. For instance, highlighting "obliged" to look it up won't show any results, even though its root "oblige" is in the dictionary. If you highlighting "obliged" to look it up in the default dictionary (New American Oxford), you'll get the right definition for its root word.

@Kab87
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Kab87 commented Jul 26, 2017

It says it downloaded but I cannot find it on my device

@mampersat
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mampersat commented Jun 9, 2019

On my Kindle paperwhite, as of 2019-06-09 the navigation is: home -> settings -> all settings -> Languages & Dictionaries -> Dictionaries -> English

@joaolmaliska
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Hey! The link doesn't open...

@joaolmaliska
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The 1st one I mean.

@jsomers
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jsomers commented Dec 8, 2020

@joaolmaliska Thanks for the note. Sadly I'm not sure how I found that link the first place. If anyone can find a replacement, post a comment here and I'll fix the gist.

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