The Sage English Dictionary
Rating: 5
Version tested: 1.4
[Note: this review was co- written by Pcfreakske2000 from Belgium.]
Description: The Sage is an English dictionary and thesaurus application that runs in the background to be used on-demand using a hotkey from any application for instant word lookups. The Sage does not need an internet connection to look up the words; they are stored locally for easy access.
Imagine that you are working with an application (say, a word processor or browser) and that you needed to get a quick definition for a word (or a synonym, or a usage example). With “The Sage” all you have to do is press a hotkey (CTRL-Shift-A by default) to immediately view all the language reference information you need for the word in question. Here are some notes on this program:
- The user interface: “The Sage” employs an interesting, hierarchical-tree structure whereby clicking on color-coded nodes produces different kinds of information on the word you are looking up. For example, clicking the red node will display the Thesaurus, green nodes will display usage examples, and blue nodes will display the same hierarchical structure for different parts of speech for your entry (e.g. as noun, verb, adjective, etc.) The interface is a bit unusual at first but is in fact quite practical and I got the hang of it very quickly.
- The reference database: comprises more than 145,00 reference with over 200,000 multiple detailed definitions and approx. 35,000 usage examples.
- Services provided: aside from definition and thesaurus lookups, provides wildcard word search and finding and solving anagrams. Will also display synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, meronyms, holonyms, and nearly 1,200,000 relationships between definitions. It provides “Encyclopedic information (geographical, historical, political)” as well as “academic knowledge (medicine, biology, etc.)
- Portable: can be used straight from a USB drive.
Pros: what I like about this program:
- Small download and easy to install. The program works fine and starts up fast
- Easy interface and quick lookups and displaying the results instantly in the program’s interface.
- Works from within (almost) any application.
- It’s easier to have a desktop application on your computer rather than to go to a dictionary website every time you want to look up a word.
- Takes only 6 megs of memory - compare this to, say, Mobysaurus, another favorite of mine which takes up a whopping 36 megs. (With Mobysaurus you get larger, multiple reference libraries and both an online and offline component, but, I think, at a much higher resource cost to justify it).
- If the word being looked up is misspelled (and therefore unrecognizable) , it will show you a list of near or similar words to choose from.
Cons: None that I can think of.
- One thing I might mention is that if you want a similar program that consumes even lower resources you can check out WordWeb. This latter program takes about 1 meg in memory but is not as nice as “The Sage” in my opinion and many functions which “The Sage” offers are only provided in the paid version of WordWeb (it does have an online component though, which is nice).
The bottom line: if you are looking for an easy to access English dictionary application that is light on resources this is the one. Unlike other similar applications, you don’t need an internet connection to access the dictionary, and it can even be run from a USB drive. The interface is nice and easy to work with. The lookups are fast and deliver the results right into the interface.
Compatibility: Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP; no info on VISTA.
Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 8 megs). Also visit the program home page.
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Hey Samer, how would you say the thesaurus function in The Sage compares to WordWeb?
I’m pretty under-impressed with WW’s thesaurus offerings - even after plunking down the $30 for the “Pro” version it provides barely a scant fraction of the thesaurus offerings of some of the online services like Thesaurus.com.
I need something that’ll rival what I can get from Thesaurus.com without the hassle (and %#$*&! pop-ups!).
It’s a great program!!
Thanks a lot for putting up the review. So far I have been using Wordweb free….and feel that this is going to replace that
One thing, you said that the ‘default shortcut’ for the hot key is (Ctrl shift A), have you found how to change it? as that key combination is used in many other software what I use and it would interfere with them.
I can’t find the option for changing the hot-key shortcut.
@ Rob O:
This is a great program and it looks like it’s better the pro version of Wordweb. Give this nice program a try before you shell out money on something else.
Mobysaurus is another free (bloated up) program for much advanced users which can refer online materials…that’s surely better than the Wordweb pro. But it’s too heavy on system resource.
Works on Vista!
I finally got over with it!!
It’s a nice looking program, but seem to miss few vital features , like the pronunciation hint which is present in the free version of WordWeb.
And it’s a tad slower than the WordWeb free.
I never could spell thank you Samer your AWESOME
Is it US or UK English?
[...] Sage English Dictionary The Sage is an English dictionary and thesaurus [COLOR=blue! important][FONT='Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif][COLOR=blue! important][FON... that runs in the background to be used on-demand using a hotkey from any application for instant [...]
“I need something that’ll rival what I can get from Thesaurus.com without the hassle (and %#$*&! pop-ups!).”
I never noticed any pop-ups from them… but then again, I use Firefox (which not only blocks the pops, but allows me to search thesaurus.com from a keyword). :oP
works well, quite comprehensive.
Ignore that last bit it was doing what it should, but I by default it clears the word after looking it up,.