Collins Cobuild English Dictionary by TomTom

Collins COBUILD
English Dictionary
Table of Contents
Introduction
Using the dictionary
Getting around
Making selections
How to contact us

Introduction

Collins Cobuild English Dictionary

Collins Dictionaries are widely acclaimed for their excellence, for their continuing innovation and for their tireless reflection of today’s language.

Today the innovation continues with the arrival of a truly pocketable version of the most easy-to-use and up-to-date dictionary for your palmtop computer.

The Collins Cobuild English Dictionary contains more than 75,000 references and over 100,000 real examples. The result of 15 years' thorough analysis of written and spoken language, this dictionary provides a clear and detailed picture of modern English.

The text of the dictionary provides users with specific help in the following areas:

- spelling
- pronunciation
- grammar
- meaning
- word frequency
- style and usage
- examples
- phrases and idioms
- phrasal verbs
- pragmatic uses
- synonyms and antonyms
- British and American variants

The Collins Dictionary by TomTom is in fact a hypertext system. Should the explanation contain a word you do not understand just click on it to find the meaning of that word.

To find out more how the dictionary was created, visit http://www.cobuild.collins.co.uk

Using the dictionary

Getting around

Finding words

To find a word in your dictionary: simply start typing it! A few letters usually suffice to find the word you are looking for.

Note : | A timing mechanism is constantly making intelligent guesses about the characters you type. If you wait more than about 1 second before typing a character, the application will assume you wish to find another word, and forget the previous characters you typed. If for some reason you are not able to type characters fast enough, use the "Find" option from the menu or the toolbar.

You do not have to bother about capitals or accents, nor about spaces, hyphens and quotes. To find "X-Ray" for example, simply type "xray".

You can also PASTE a word directly into the dictionary screen - it will start searching for a match immediately.

Browsing

Of course, you can use the arrow keys, Page Up, Page Down, Home and End and the scroll bar to browse through the dictionary text.

The hypertext system allows you to press ENTER on any highlighted word and immediately go to its dictionary entry.

Back & Forward

The application keeps track of the key words you have recently "visited". You can use the "back" and "forward" options to go back and forth in the history of your use.

Display

You can switch between the full text and just the word list, by either

- Using the "Display" menu option
- Pressing the SPACEBAR
- Pressing ENTER while a keyword is highlighted

The dictionary text: size, colour and font

As usual, you can use the "zoom in" and "zoom out" options to change the size of the text. You can also use the "Preferences" option to change the way things are displayed.

Making selections

The "Crossword" option

The "Crossword" option is useful for finding crossword solutions. To find a five-letter word starting with "a", ending with "r", and of which you know the third letter should be a "b", type "a?b?r".

It may also come in handy if you don't know the exact spelling, just that it probably starts with "a" and ends with "eu", type "a*eu".

Note : | You can only use "*" once in a search.

The "Anagrams" option

The "anagrams" option will find every word in the dictionary that can be made up from the letters you enter. If, for instance, you type your name, it will scan the dictionary for all the words that can be made out of the letters of your name. (Only key words that are in the dictionary will be found, no conjugations, past tenses etc.)

Tagging words in the dictionaries

You can use the TAG and UNTAG options to create your own selection of words.

You can also use the TAG ALL and UNTAG ALL options, which may be useful if you have made a selection first.

Example : | find all words ending in "man" (using *man in crossword), tag all that are found, then find all words ending in "boy", tag these as well, then use the "select all tagged words". You now have all words ending with either "man" or "boy".

Selecting the tagged words

This option will switch between the normal dictionary text and the selection of tagged entries.

Aborting a selection

Most options and actions will abort a selection and return to the full dictionary. You can also press ESCAPE to clear a selection.

How to contact us

Web site

Visit our web site at

http://www.tomtom.com for support, news about our products, free software and upgrades.

You can register Collins Cobuild English Dictionary electronically on our website so we can keep you informed about free upgrades.

ã Copyright Palmtop BV 2001

ã HarperCollins Publishers 1996-2001

All rights reserved. This manual and the programs referred to herein are copyrighted works of Palmtop BV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The Palmtop logo is a trademark of Palmtop BV. TomTom is a trademark of Palmtop BV. Reproduction in whole or in part, including utilisation in machines capable of reproduction or retrieval, without the express written permission of the copyright holders is prohibited. Reverse engineering is also prohibited. The information in this document is subject to change without notice.

Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Dieses Handbuch und die darin erwähnten Programme sind Copyright-geschützte Werke von Palmtop BV, Amsterdam, Niederlande. Sie dürfen ohne ausdrückliche schriftliche Genehmigung durch die Copyright-Eigentümer weder ganz noch teilweise reproduziert werden, wozu auch die Verwendung in reproduzier- und retrievalfähigen Maschinen gehört. Reverse Engineering ist ebenfalls untersagt. Bei den in diesem Dokument enthaltenen Informationen sind Änderungen ohne vorherige Ankündigung vorbehalten.

Tous droits réservés. Les droits d'auteur de ce manuel et des programmes auxquels il fait référence sont la propriété de Palmtop BV, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas. Il est interdit de reproduire tout ou partie de ce manuel, y compris sur machine capable de reproduire ou d'extraire, sans le consentement préalable par écrit de Palmtop BV. Tout désossage est également interdit. Les renseignements fournis dans ce manuel sont susceptibles d'être modifiés sans préavis.

Made in the European Union.

All trademarks and copyrights are acknowledged.

Version 1.0 - July 2001