my dad's a high school special ed teacher, and when i was in high school (going to the school he teaches at) i would always read the visual dictionaries that he had in the resource room while waiting for him to finish his day and get a ride home. i ended up taking one home and never returning it! visual dictionaries are fascinating, and i learned a lot more about the anatomy of pianos and the history of women's clothing than i ever could with an ordinary dictionary.

benko

Damn the internet is powerful! Thanks again LH.

FrogBoy

@TendoMentis:

I ended up using my digital camera and photographing the part and the location of the problem and brought it to home depot.

ironchef

I used to use this dictionary in book form for ESL (English as a Second Language) students. They *loved* these because of the visual aspect. Really a great tool for that, but they are limited in scope (i.e. dunno if you could find that toilet part). The school I taught at could have used more than the 1 prized copy it had.
Kudos to Merriam-Webster for putting it online for free! I hope it stays that way!

jonathan19

Outstanding.

Now where was this two weeks ago when my toilet wouldn't flush (the whatsit was broken :) and I had to unhook the whole thing and take to the the Home Depot to visually match it with a replacement.

I felt like such a plumbing n00b that I had to wait around for someone who looked like they were a bonafide plumber to walk down that aisle just so I could stop them and pester them with questions about website development just so I could walk away feeling like I broke even :)

TendoMentis

Isn't that called memory scaffolding?
Teachers have been using this technique with students for years with great success.

Reg

@benko: Are you sure that wasn't ...learned a lot more about the anatomy of women and the history of pianos... ?

/Just asking.....

heavylee-again

It crashed my FF browser twice before I gave up... is it just me?

earth2marsh

phantastic!
Does anyone know wether such tool exists in Spanish or German?

JoergW

One of the best posts that I read in Lifehacker.
Being non native English speaker I have everyday issues with names of different staff.

I am looking to find a visual dictionary for construction industry but I haven't found something good up to now.

And the paradox is that when they teach you English in school the teach words such as: teacher, book, pen, pencil, class etc. but they never teach you deadbolt lock, or clutch pedal, or flange so finding these words for non native English speaker is really hard.
So sometime even explanations of word in dictionary are hard to understand and up to now what I did to figure out what that part is I searched in Google for images and you can find similar items and have e better idea what are people talking about.

lureho

Thank you so much, Lifehacker Adam! This will be very useful for me in my work. I am an office manager for a remodeling/woodworking firm, and many times people call wanting XYZ repaired or remodeled, and cannot adequately communicate what they want. This tool will help my clients identify the anatomy of windows, mouldings, etc. etc.! (You'd be surprised how confusing terminology such as "sash," "sill" and "jamb" can be for the layperson). I can point them to this website and say, "do you mean the [blank]?"
Thanks, LH!

KMT