Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@jsomers
Created May 19, 2014 01:42
Show Gist options
  • Star 67 You must be signed in to star a gist
  • Fork 5 You must be signed in to fork a gist
  • Save jsomers/4236a2770a51e0b24900 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save jsomers/4236a2770a51e0b24900 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
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.

@guoyilou
Copy link

.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
Copy link

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
Copy link

Kab87 commented Jul 26, 2017

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

@mampersat
Copy link

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
Copy link

Hey! The link doesn't open...

@joaolmaliska
Copy link

The 1st one I mean.

@jsomers
Copy link
Author

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.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment