How to Use Bilingual Dictionaries

By Laura K. Lawless, About.com Guide

Once you've found your translation, even after considering context, parts of speech, and all the rest, it's still a good idea to try to verify that you've chosen the best word. A quick and easy way to check is with a reverse look-up, which simply means looking up the word in the new language to see what translations it offers in the original language.

For example, if you look up "purple," your dictionary might offer violet and pourpre as the French translations. When you look up these two words in the French-to-English part of the dictionary, you'll find that violet means "purple" or "violet," while pourpre means "crimson" or "red-violet." The English-to-French lists pourpre as an acceptable equivalent to purple, but it isn't really purple - it's more red, like the color of someone's angry face.