Latin dictionary apps

January 7th, 2015 | Tags: ,

So, I’ve been trying to find some good apps for my students to use as electronic Latin dictionaries. I finally got around to it, and here’s the results of my search. I have tested all the Android apps, but I don’t have an iPhone; if you have good suggestions to supplement this list or have good feedback on one or more of these, let me know and I’ll add it!

Free

Whitaker’s Words: An app version of the Web software [http://archives.nd.edu/words.html]. A similarly clean interface, and only somewhat less featureful, it lists principal parts and part of speech. NB: you must take care to read the entries carefully to make sure you correctly identify which word you mean!

Verba: An offline Latin-English dictionary application based on An Elementary Latin Dictionary (1895) by Charlton T. Lewis. Accepts any inflectional form of a word, then presents a list of all matching inflections and lemmas, from which the definition may be accessed.  It has slightly weird interface, and it does not list principal parts with any consistency. But it gives exhaustive usage examples, and it is Free software!

Dictionary Latin English Free: Great for looking up a Latin word by its principal parts or its English definition; it also lists declension or conjugation. Not great for figuring out what an inflected word’s principal parts are, though. It also hooks in to Google Translate, which is worse than useless. (I mean it–GT is actively obstructive to learning Latin. Try for yourself and see.) Also, it has ads.

Paid

Latin +: Just a dictionary and word parser. An inexpensive tool that’s part of the larger SPQR suite, useful for beginning Latin students.

SPQR: A full-featured Latin reading suite with a dictionary, word parser, and flashcard tool. It also includes a rather large collection of texts (some with translations supplied!). Worth every penny for a student intending to take upper-level Latin. [This is what I primarily use.]

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