Word Discoverer highlights rare English dictionary words, idioms and proverbs on web pages.
It helps non-native English learners to discover new expressions while they are browsing the Internet.
Highlighting of rare words is useful because some people do not even notice vaguely known words, especially when these words are not critical for understanding of the text that they read. One possible explanation of this strange and pertexing effect is that mind of a reader is concentrated on understanding the meaning and structure of the text, and after finishing reading a sentence many readers won’t go back to check the meaning of unfamiliar words that they have already forgot. E.g. some readers will forget to check the definition of word “pertexing” from the previous sentence which, in fact, doesn’t exist. And even if you did check it, you still can try this extension, it highlights only real English dictionary words and idioms =)
*NOTE* On installation Words Discoverer shows scary warning that it can “read and change all you data on the websites your visit” – don’t worry, Words Discoverer will not send any of your data anywhere. In fact it doesn’t even talk to any servers, all highlighting logic is performed locally in your browser, so if you have some saved html files to read, you can even use Words Discoverer offline. The source code is here if you are curious: https://github.com/mechatroner/aided_reading
Words Discoverer is free forever, open source, and it has no ads.
Here are some features of the extension:
Words Discoverer is better than “Word-of-the-day” type of programs because new words are highlighted in context of the text that you read, which is a good motivating factor to finally check the definitions and learn these words (or idioms).
Depending on your vocabulary size, you can adjust frequency threshold of highlighted words e.g. skip 25% most common English words, and highlight all the rest. There’s no way to set such threshold for idioms and proverbs, the extension can either highlight all of them or none.
Words Discoverer can operate in two modes:
In the first (default) mode it highlight all Internet pages except sites that you add to a special list. E.g. you may not want to highlight anything from youtube.
In the second mode Words Discoverer highlights only sites from another special list – your favorite English sites. By default this list is empty, so unless you add there something (e.g. facebook, wikipedia, bbc.com), it won’t highlight anything at all.
Currently there are ~50K words and ~1600 idioms in the extension’s dictionary. If you’re interested you can look at them on project’s github page.
Here some example of idioms from the dictionary: “brand new”(everyone knows this one), “bucket list”, “moral high ground”, “baby shower”(it is not a shower for babies), “money laundering”, “jigsaw puzzle”, “veil of ignorance”. And there are many others.
If you known definition of a highlighted word, you can add it to your personal vocabulary and it won’t be detected any more. When you add a word it is converted to normal form for your vocabulary e.g. “dogs -> dog”. You can always view your vocabulary or save it as a text file.
By selecting text of a word (or idiom) and right clicking on it you can either add the word to your vocabulary or view it’s definition in one of 4 online dictionaries using context menu references. And, of course, you can also use Words Discoverer in combination with your favorite dictionary app (e.g. “Google dictionary” extension)
Interesting fact: most adult native English speakers know 20000-35000 words, so it is totally possible to eventually add them all to your vocabulary file.
Contributors:
github user XQDD – Text-To-Speech idea and implementation
Excellent!
太棒了,好喜欢
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much!
词汇列表的排序可以按添加时间排序更好,现在按首字母先后顺序排序影响记忆结构。
Doesn’t work in Vivaldi browser
建议添加一个快捷键, 相比单纯用鼠标可以大大提高使用效率
感觉很厉害啊,哈哈哈哈
edge chromium 无法连接Google drive
ارجو ان يكون مفيد
Thank you for writing this fantastic ext.! It help me learn English a lot.
I really love it and make a japanese version of it since it’s open source. Those who want to learn Japanese can try my Japanese version.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/japanese-highlighter/jkaebofgmgllgmbiinlegcoijdcoiinl
无法使用。点击在所有网站上启用和仅在收藏的网站上启用都没反应,会自动取消掉。
Can not use it. Both chosing the button “all website” and “only favorate list” will be cancled.
Great!
its helpful draw your attention into hard words so you learn more thanks . but
I am white.
很好用的插件,就是看本地pdf的时候貌似用不了
从google翻译到中文的连接有错误,能否修改下
https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=zh-CN&text=myword
很好,但是发现有的单词没有标注且自己不会,这是怎么回事呢,如果可以自定义标注那个等级的单词就太好了。比如,我想标注6级大纲词汇。
ok
i really love this extension. it’s grate method to remember words by repeatedly.
i do appreciate if you you add one more function like this extention woking
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(Highlight This: finds and marks words)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/highlight-this-finds-and/fgmbnmjmbjenlhbefngfibmjkpbcljaj
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so when i read goolgle news on the web page, i can easily get a quick looking back the words i’ve learned and memorize them again by repeatedly (deep learning)
能否添加一个功能,让用谷歌浏览器打开的PDF文件也可以使用插件
Thanks for the great extension, but pls update the firefox version, it was 2 years ago since the first upload!
Goood
你好,
导出来的单词本貌似有问题。请问可以修复吗?谢谢。
It’s Great
it’s the most useful extension i’ve ever use!!! thank you