Dictionary skills

Dictionary skills
Using a dictionary in your first or second language is a skill you can improve with practice and by following some basic
guidelines. This section gives you a detailed explanation of how to use Spanishdict or any other online dictionary to
ensure you get the most out of it and do NOT resort to cheating via translation websites that don’t even do the job.

Finding the word you want
Type the word in English or Spanish spelling it as close to correctly as possible: flat

Make sure you look at the right entry
An entry is made up of a word, its translations, and, often, example phrases to show you how to use the translations. If
there is more than one entry for the same word, then there is a note to tell you so.
>Look for an example phrase that uses the word the way you want to use it. (i.e. “The road didn’t have hills, it was flat.”
vs. “My tire is flat.”
1. Which of the entries below will help you translate the phrase ‘My car has a flat tire’? (Write the Spanish
phrase “flat tire”) _________________________________
Look at the following example entries:
flat
NOUN
1. apartamento (m) (apartment) (británico)piso (m) (español de España)departamento (m) (español de Argentina)
2. rueda (f) desinflada (familiar) (flat tire)
también:

mud flats marismas (f pl)

salt flats salinas (f pl)
ADJECTIVE
3. llano(a), liso(a), plano(a) (surface); llano(a) (landscape, region); liso(a), plano(a) (roof); chato(a) (nose)

to be as flat as a pancake estar liso(a) como un plato; estar plana como una tabla (familiar) (flat-chested)

flat cap (familiar) = gorra de tela

to have flat feet tener los pies planos

flat racing carrera (f) de caballos (sin obstáculos)

flat rate tarifa (f) única

flat tire rueda (f) desinflada
4. rotundo(a) (refusal)
5. gris, monótono(a) (existence, atmosphere); monótono(a) (voice); descargado(a) (battery)

this beer is flat esta cerveza ha perdido el gas or no tiene fuerza
6. bemol (Mus) (a semitone lower); desafinado(a) (out of tune)

B flat si (m) bemol
ADVERB
también:
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
he lay flat on the floor estaba tumbado en el suelo

to fall flat on one's face caer de bruces

the joke fell flat (sentido figurado

Never take the first translation you see without looking at the others. Always look to see if there is
more than one translation underlined.
Words often have more than one meaning and more than one translation. For example, a pool can be a puddle, a pond
or a swimming pool; pool can also be a game. When you are translating from English into Spanish, be careful to choose
the Spanish word that has the particular meaning you want. The dictionary offers you a lot of help with this. Look at the
following entry:
pool
NOUN
1. (place to swim)
a. la piscina (f)
We swim at the pool every Saturday.Nadamos en la piscina todos los sábados.
b. la alberca (f) (Mexico)
The new pool can be used at night.La alberca nueva se puede utilizar por las noches.
c. la pileta (f) (Argentina)
The kids had a great time at the pool.Los niños se lo pasaron chévere en la pileta.
2. (puddle)
a. el charco (m) (of any liquid)
The dishwasher is leaking and now there's a pool of water on the kitchen floor.El lavaplatos está chorreando y ahora hay un charco de
agua en el piso de la cocina.
b. la charca (f) (of water)
We loved swimming in the forest pool as kids.De niños nos encantaba nadar en la charca del bosque.
3. (billiards)
a. el billar americano (m)
He is very good at playing pool.Es muy bueno jugando al billar americano.
4. (gambling)
a. el bote (m)
Who won this year's March Madness office pool?¿Quién ganó el bote de March Madness de la empresa este año?
The numbers tell you that there is more than one possible translation and the words in brackets in italics after the
translations help you choose the translation you want.
2. How would you translate ‘I like playing pool’? Me gusta jugar ___________________________
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
Also, you must understand what part of speech* you are using.
>When looking up “flat,” it helps you choose the best entry faster if you know you’re looking for an adjective. Are you
using the word as a noun(person, place, thing, or idea), verb(action or state of being), adjective(describes a noun), an
adverb(describes a verb, adjective, or adverb), a preposition(links a noun to another word), a pronoun (replaces a noun),
a conjunction (joins words, clauses, or senteneces), or an interjection (short exclamation)?
3. Give two examples from the chart using the link with the asterisk* for each part of speech:
Noun_______________________
Verb____________________________
Adjective____________________________
Preposition____________________________________
Pronoun_____________________________
Conjunction___________________________________
Parts of speech
If you look up the word flat, you will see that there are two entries for this word as it can be a noun or an adjective. It
helps to choose correctly between entries if you know how to recognize these different types of words.
Nouns and pronouns
Nouns often appear with words like a, the, this, that, my, your and his.
They can be singular (abbreviated to sing in the dictionary):
his dog
her cat
a street
or plural (abbreviated to pl in the dictionary):
the facts
those people his shoes
our holidays
They can be the subject of a verb:
Vegetables are good for you
or the object of a verb:
I play tennis
Words like I, me, you, he, she, him, her and they are pronouns. They can be used instead of nouns. You can refer
to a person as he or she or to a thing as it.
I bought my mother a box of chocolates.
4. Which three words in this sentence are nouns? _____________________________________
5. Which of the nouns is plural? _______________________________________
6. Which word is a pronoun? __________________________________
Spanish nouns are either masculine or feminine (abbreviated to masc and fem). Masculine nouns are
shown by el:
el hombre
el gato
Feminine nouns are shown by la:
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el fútbol
la mujer
la economía
la fábrica
The plural forms of el and la are los and las. The plural of most Spanish nouns is made by adding s if the
word ends in a vowel, or es if it ends in a consonant:
los gatos
las mujeres
7. zapato – How do you write “three shoes”? tres __________
8. rosal- How do you write “five rose bushes”? cinco ____________________
Adjectives
Flat can be an adjective as well as a noun. Adjectives describe nouns: your tire can be flat, you can have a pair of
flat shoes.
9. In which sentence is ‘dark’ an adjective? ______________________________________________
I’m afraid of the dark.
The girl has dark hair.
Spanish adjectives can be masculine or feminine, singular or plural, depending on the noun they describe:
un chico guapo (masc sing)
una chica guapa (fem sing: replace -o of masculine with -a)
unos chicos guapos (masc pl = masculine singular + s)
unas chicas guapas (fem pl = feminine singular + s)
Regular adjectives are listed in the singular form in the dictionary. So if you want to find out what kind of houses
unas casas viejas are, look under viejo.
10. What word should you look up in Spanish if you want to know what casas doradas are? _____________
There are separate masculine and feminine, singular and plural forms for irregular adjectives of nationality, and
those ending in -án, -ín, -ón,
eg español masculine singular, española, feminine singular,
españoles masculine plural, españolas feminine plural.
Adjectives ending in -or also follow the above pattern unless they are comparatives. The feminine is
shown in the dictionary for adjectives of this type.
hablador, -ora
ADJECTIVE
1. talkative
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MASCULINE OR FEMININE NOUN
2. chatterbox
Other adjectives ending in a consonant do not have a separate feminine form, but do change in the
plural, eg azul masculine and feminine singular, azules masculine and feminine plural.
If the masculine form of an adjective ends in -e or -a, the feminine form is the same, and both the
masculine and feminine plurals are formed by adding -s to the masculine, eg verde masculine and
feminine singular, verdes masculine and feminine plural.
Some adjectives remain the same whether they’re masculine, feminine or plural. This is also shown in
the dictionary:
11. formal- How do you write “two formal dances”? Dos bailes _________________
Verbs
She’s going to record the program for me.
His time in the race was a new world record.
Record is a verb in the first sentence. In the second, it is a noun.
One way to recognize a verb is that it frequently comes with a pronoun such as I, you or she, or with
somebody’s name. Verbs can relate to the present, the past or the future. They have a number of different
forms to show this: I’m going (present), he will go (future), and Nicola went by herself (past). Often verbs
appear with to: they promised to go. This basic form of the verb is called the infinitive. (In Spanish and infinitive
consists of only ONE word that ends in –ar, -er, -ir.)
**Generally in dictionaries verbs are preceded by ‘to’, so you can identify them at a glance. No matter which of
the four previous examples you want to translate, you should look up ‘to go’, not ‘going’ or ‘went’. If you want
to translate ‘I thought’, look up ‘to think’.
12. What would you look up to translate the verbs in these phrases?
I came _______
she’s crying _________
they’ve done it ______ he’s out _______
Verbs have different endings in Spanish, depending on whether you are talking about yo, tú, nosotros
etc: yo hablo, tú hablas, nosotros hablamos etc.
They also have different forms for the present, future, past etc. Hablamos (we speak = present), hemos
hablado (we spoke = past), hablaremos (we will speak = future).
Hablar is the infinitive and is the form that appears in the dictionary. Sometimes the verb changes
completely between the infinitive form and the yo, tú, él etc form. For example, to give is dar, but I give
is doy, and digo comes from decir (to say).
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When you look up a verb on Spanishdict above the word you will see the options “dictionary” or
“conjugation”. Once you’ve read the definition options and are sure it’s the right word, CLICK ON
CONJUGATION! There you will see all the choices that will help you say what you mean. If a verb has
irregular forms it will show them in red to help you pay attention to the difference from the regular –ar,
-er, -ir patterns. –morir= to die.
If you’re looking up a word during lectura libre and you’re not sure if it’s a regular verb, or if you have no
idea what the infinitive is, you can type in the like “puedo”(from poder= to be able to) and it will show
you the infinitive and the conjugation. That’s the difference between a paper vs. online dictionary. It’s a
good idea to get into the practice of making educated guesses about a verb’s infinitive like, plactican is
probably an –ar verb because it ends in “an”. That doesn’t always work, but you can check your guess
using Spanishdict.
The other resource you have is your VERB CHEAT SHEET that shows you the regular forms for –ar, -er, -ir
in the present and past tenses as well as the most common irregular and stem changing verbs.
*When dealing with verbs a dictionary is USELESS unless you use the conjugation option or your verb
cheat sheet. Otherwise you will sound like a caveman or Cookie Monster forever: “I eat hamburger
yesterday.”
13. What is the infinitive of the verb “vuelves”? _______________________________
14. Does it have any irregular forms in the present? ________ If so, give an example: _________________
Adverbs
An adverb is a word that describes a verb or an adjective:
Write soon.
Check your work carefully.
The film was very good.
In the sentence ‘The swimming pool is open daily’, daily is an adverb describing the adjective open. In
the phrase ‘my daily routine’, daily is an adjective describing the noun routine. We use the same word in
English for both adjective and adverb forms, but to get the right Spanish translation, it is important to
know if it’s being used as an adjective or an adverb. When you look up daily you find:
daily
NOUN
1. diario (m) periódico (m) (newspaper)
ADJECTIVE
2. diario(a)

on a daily basis a diario

our daily bread el pan nuestro de cada día

the daily grind (familiar) la rutina diaria
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
daily paper diario (m) , periódico (m)
ADVERB
3. diariamente

twice daily dos veces al día
The examples show you daily being used as an adjective and as an adverb and will help you choose the
right Spanish translation.
Take the sentence ‘The menu changes daily’.
15. Is ‘daily’ an adverb or an adjective here? ________________________
Prepositions
Prepositions are words like for, with and across, which are followed by nouns or pronouns:
I’ve got a present for David.
Come with me.
He ran across the road.
The party’s over.
The shop’s just over the road.
16. Which sentence shows a preposition followed by a noun? __________________________
Making use of the phrases in the dictionary
Sometimes when you look up a word you will find not only the word, but the exact phrase you want. For
example, you might want to say ‘What’s the date today?’. Look up date and you will find that exact
phrase and its translation.
Sometimes you have to adapt what you find in the dictionary. If you want to say ‘I ate a sandwich’ and
look up eat you will find:
eat
TRANSITIVE VERB
1. (to consume)
a. comer
I haven't eaten anything since this morning.No he comido nada desde esta mañana.
Remember that you will either need to use your VERB CHEAT SHEET to look at an example for an –er verb in the
past(you wanted to say “I ate a sandwich”), or click on the “conjugation” option. There you will see that the “yo”
form for comer in the past is “comí.”
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You have to substitute comí for the infinitive form comer. You will often have to adapt the infinitive in
this way, adding the correct ending and choosing the present, future or past form.
17. How would you say ‘I don’t eat meat’?(carne=meat) ___________________________________
Phrases containing nouns and adjectives also need to be adapted. You may need to make the noun
plural, or the adjective feminine or plural. Remember that some Spanish nouns and adjectives change
their spelling in the feminine or plural and that this is shown in the entry.
18. How would you say ‘The boys are Spanish’? Los chicos son ________________________
Don’t overuse the dictionary
It takes time to look up words so try to avoid using the dictionary unnecessarily, especially in exams.
Think carefully about what you want to say and see if you can put it another way, using words you
already know. To rephrase things you can:
> Use a word with a similar meaning. This is particularly easy with adjectives, as there are a lot of words
which mean good, bad, big etc and you’re sure to know at least one.
> Use negatives: if the cake you made was a total disaster, you could just say it wasn’t very good.
> Use particular examples instead of general terms. If you are asked to describe the sports facilities in
your area, and time is short, you could say something like ‘In our town there is a swimming pool and a
football field.’
19. How could you say ‘Argentina is huge’ without looking up the word ‘huge’ ? Argentina es ______________.
You can also often guess the meaning of a Spanish word by using others to give you a clue. If you see the
sentence ‘María lee un buen libro’, you may not know the meaning of the word lee, but you know it’s a
verb because it’s preceded by María. Therefore it must be something you can do to a book: read. So the
translation is: María is reading a good book.
20. Try NOT to use your dictionary to work out the meaning of the sentence:
‘La chica le escribe una carta a su amiga en español’. _________________________________________
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ANSWERS
1. rueda desinflada
5. chocolates
9. The girl has dark hair.
2. al billar (Americano)
6. I
10. dorado
3. (see table)
7. zapatos
11. formales
4. mother, box , chocolates
8. Rosales
12. Come, cry, do, is
13. volver
17. No como carne.
14. yes, vuelvo, vuelve, vuelven
18. españoles
15. adverb
19. grande, muy grande
16. over the road
20. The girl writes a letter to her friend in Spanish.
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