THE LEXITERIA MIDDLE-SCHOOL DICTIONARY

A Dictionary Like No Other

The Lexiteria Middle School Dictionary is like no other dictionary on the market. It is not a traditional dictionary adapted for electronic texts. It was designed specifically for SmartWord applications in e-texts. It differs from all other dictionaries on the market in the following respects.

• Simple Definitions Aimed at Middle Schoolers.

  The Lexiteria Middle School Dictionary is not a comprehensive dictionary. It offers only the most relevant definitions written in simple English aimed at English-speakers at the middle-school level (6th-7th grades). If a word in the definition might be above the middle school level, a definition of that word will be included within the definition, e.g. Nativist: An advocate of nativism (the policy of favoring native-born citizens of a country over those from foreign countries). This is one means of making our definitions "one-stop" definitions that are complete in themselves and do not send the reader to another entry or elsewhere.

• One-stop definitions.

  The definitions in our dictionary do not refer to other entries. There are no entries like these:

  Prevention: See prevent.
  Prevention: The act of preventing.

  If the reader doesn't know the meaning of prevention, he or she will not likely know the meaning of preventing. Our definition of prevention and prevent are these:
  

  Prevention: Stopping the occurrence of something, as the prevention of fire.
  Prevent: To stop from occurring, as to prevent fire.

• Accidental Homonyms.

  Accidental homonyms like can (1. (Verb-auxilliary) Able to do; 2.(Noun) A metal jar-like container; 3. (Verb-transitive) To put in a metal jar-like container) are defined together so that the spelling can has only one entry. Keeping accidental homonyms in one entry makes programming SmartWords very simple: the programmer does not need to know which meaning is required in a given sentence. Our definitions are so terse and compact, the reader can easily choose which one applies to the sentence he or she is reading.

  However, the database is set up so that these accidental homonyms may be easily pulled out of a definition and given a separate entry in case the customer wants to produce a hard-copy dictionary by simply separating the parts of speech in each definition.

• Educational Features

  In order to encourage vocabulary building, slightly more difficult words are often introduced after simpler terms our editors are sure middle-schoolers will know. In this definition, for example, confluence is introduced after it has been explained: Khartoum: The capital of Sudan with a population of about 1 million, situated where the White Nile and the Blue Nile meet (at their confluence). Most readers who don't know the word already should add "confluence" to their vocabulary by reading this entry. Notice in this definition that our dictionary does not include specific, obviously incorrect popularion figures (1,212,657) but approximations that will be relatively accurate for years to come.

  Because it is targeted at middle-schoolers, the Lexiteria dictionary entries (1) clearly distinguish slang from formal English, (2) contain no profanity (though it is optionally available), and (3) are HR Sensitive to gender, racial, religious differences.

• Conclusion

  All of these features—and others—distinguish the Lexiteria Middle-School Dictionary from all others. It was designed for readers with a middle-school education or higher reading electronic texts who do not want to be interrupted by a trip to a traditional dictionary, a trip that may be extended by looking up several words rather than just the one giving the problem.

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