Why the dictionary gives you the wrong meaning (and what to do)
Most common words have several meanings, and the first one a dictionary lists is often not the one in your sentence. How to find the right meaning fast when you read.
The short answer: common words have many meanings, and dictionaries list them by frequency or history, not by your sentence. So the first meaning is often the wrong one, and a one-word pop-up translation is wrong more often still. Read the whole sentence, look for a set phrase the word belongs to, and pick the meaning that makes the sentence work. Or use a reader that explains the word as it is used in that sentence.
The problem
Look up the Spanish word cola and you get: tail, queue, glue, cola (the drink), train of a dress. In “hicieron cola durante una hora” only one fits: they queued for an hour. A learner who takes the first entry reads that they made a tail for an hour.
This is not rare. The most frequent words in any language are the ones with the most meanings, and they are also the ones learners look up while reading.
- English run: run a company, run late, a run in your tights, the meeting ran over.
- French rater: to miss a train, to fail an exam, to botch a cake.
- Dutch al: all, already, while.
- German verschieben: to move something, or to postpone an appointment.
Phrases make it worse
Many words only make sense in a phrase. Per un pelo in Italian is “by a hair”, meaning only just. Ficar de in Portuguese, with a verb, means to agree to do something, though ficar alone means to stay. A dictionary entry for the single word will not show you the phrase unless you already know to look for it.
What to do
- Read the whole sentence first. You often know enough to rule meanings out.
- Look at the neighbours. Prepositions and objects change meanings: run over a meeting vs run over a cat.
- Search the phrase, not the word. If two or three words look like they belong together, look them up together.
- Choose the meaning that makes the sentence work. Then reread the sentence with it.
- Save the word with its sentence. The sentence reminds you which meaning you learned.
Let the sentence choose
This is the one thing ContextCat does differently. When you tap a word, the explanation is written for the sentence you are in: cola in that sentence is a queue, and the note says it is not a tail or glue. It also explains the phrase the word belongs to, in your own language, and keeps the sentence with the word for review later.
Questions
Why are pop-up translations often wrong?
- A word-for-word translation picks the most common meaning of a word on its own. The sentence may use a rarer meaning, an idiom or a phrasal verb, so the single translation does not fit.
How do I find the right meaning of a word in a sentence?
- Read the whole sentence, look at the words around it, and check which meaning makes the sentence make sense. Look for set phrases. A tool that explains the word in its sentence does this for you.