Although I’ve been writing professionally for over 10 years now, I still come across words in the English language that I either don’t understand, or don’t know how to pronounce. I still laugh at the fact that I was pronouncing ‘Yosemite’ all wrong and only realized my mistake when I got hooked onto all the Yosemite Timelapse videos on Vimeo. Often, I come across words with an interesting spelling and have to look up their meaning to fully understand them. Although I’ve mostly relied upon the built-in dictionaries of OS X and iOS, apps like LookUp and Word Vault have really helped me in improving my vocabulary.
Word Vault by Chaotic Good has been around for two years now, but the version 2.0 that was released yesterday is what really makes it a solid dictionary and vocabulary builder app for iPhone. This update introduces an all new design that brings a very modern look to the app. Word Vault has a great autocomplete feature that suggests words as you’re typing. I love that the app launches directly with the Search field in focus, ready for you to type your word. The app also displays an image or illustration for the word you’ve looked up, so a context is readily available. You can quickly hear the pronunciation of a word with a single tap or mark your favorite words.
The app maintains a list of all the words you’ve looked up in the app and also allows you to ‘Review’ them at a later date. With this feature, Word Vault gives you suggestions and definitions of the word and makes you type it by recollecting what the spelling is. This is a great exercise and if you make this a habit, it’s also a great way to improve your vocabulary.
Word Vault is available for just $3.99 on the App Store, with an optional $1.99 IAP to enable the ‘Translations’ feature, which allows you to translate the words you’ve added in the app.