Have you ever been in a spot where you needed to know the definition of a word but had no access to a dictionary? Perhaps you were writing a document only to be stumped for a synonym for the word ‘love’ or ‘hate’. Well, from my experiences using Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus for Palm OS (and Pocket PC) these scenarios appear to be things of the past.

I should first note that this program takes up an unheard of 5.5MB of space on your handheld! That means if your device is limited to only 8 or even 16 MB of space you may wish to consider a memory card (if that is even an option on your device). 5.5MB goes quite far with this program – it offers an impressive (if not unbeatable) 100,000 entries!

When you first start the program you are presented with a very well done interface that gives the whole program a feel of wood and parchment and it certainly feels like you are looking a word up in a desk dictionary. While some may say that the interface on a dictionary program is of little consequence I say that this little touch shows that this was intended to not only give the user a quick and seamless interface but also a pleasant experience while using the program. There are two other themes but I found them difficult on even young eyes unless you were in proper lighting.

For finding words, you have two main options, you can scroll through the list of words from A-Z in its entirety or you can enter the letters that you are looking for in the ever-present search box. With each letter entered the program jumps to the closest match to facilitate your search. I found more and more I was opening this program and simply scrolling through the list to see what words were included – it is actually quite fun and educational too – try saying that about another application you use on a regular basis.

As a fun alternative to the aforementioned methods of searching words you can select the “Word of the Day!” option and be presented with a new word and its definition to help increase your vocabulary, While I didn’t use this daily, I often popped it open just to have some fun – a kind of mind game for a time when you are bored.

Thankfully this program offers not only a dictionary but also a fully functional thesaurus integrated into the dictionary. You simply find the dictionary entry in one of the previously mentioned ways and then click on one of the synonyms hot-linked at the bottom of the entry. I found I was using this program more so then the dictionary for writing purposes.

A review of course, would not be complete without some quibble regarding this program. Of course this isn’t necessarily a quibble anyone in the United States will have. I’m from Canada, you know that place where they spell color with a “u” in it, or theater with an “-re” at the end or one of the many other little words that we kept from the Queen’s English. Well, due to this problem I would often find myself searching for ‘colour’, only to discover that this word only exists as ‘color’. Of course it is called the Oxford AMERICAN dictionary for a reason, but this is just a warning to any Brits, Aussies or Canadians that you may not find your favorite words listed by their ‘common’ spelling. It isn’t a major problem and, like I said anyone from America or that uses American English in his or her daily language will find this large program very useful. The final ‘suggestion’ I have to the developer is to somehow integrate this with all ‘core’ programs on the Palm/Pocket PC device and allow spell check.

This program delivers on what it promises and does so in a functional and pretty way. The integration between the dictionary and thesaurus are seamless and the definitions are accurate and informative. I really cannot think of one truly wrong thing about it. Fir this it achieves Alive Award for Excellence!

For this it achieves Alive Award for Excellence!