Open a blended book on an e-reader and try to look up one of the words it swapped in, and the device comes up empty. Its dictionary lookup checks whatever dictionary happens to be installed, and that dictionary has never heard of the word a blend put there. The fix isn't a firmware feature — it's a small file. Every blended book for your e-reader now ships with its own companion dictionary, built from that exact book, so the reader's existing lookup gesture can explain the one word it would otherwise shrug at.
The problem, and the idea behind the fix#
Whatever dictionary you have selected on your reader — the one you picked for the language you normally read — was built for ordinary text in that language. Open a blended book — ordinary English with, say, one word in five swapped into Spanish — and tap one of those Spanish words, and that dictionary has nothing to say about it; it was never built to know a word that only exists because a blend put it there. It's the same wall Kindle readers hit with their built-in dictionary when a book's language doesn't match the one installed (see how to read Kindle books in a foreign language) — except here the mismatch is word by word, inside a single sentence, not book by book.
The fix isn't to teach the firmware something new. CrossPoint has known how to look a word up in whatever dictionary is active since dictionary lookup shipped in version 1.6.0. So instead of a new feature, we build a new dictionary: a file made from that exact blended book, holding only the words the blend used, each one explained in the language you already read. Select it once, and the reader's existing lookup gesture starts answering for a book it has never seen before.
A worked lookup#
Say a blended Great Gatsby keeps the English sentence but swaps in a Spanish verb: "he mantuvo his composure." Look that word up — Reader Menu → Look Up, then tap it, on CrossPoint's current stable release — and the dictionary answers:
held · mantener
Two things in one line: "held" is what the word means right there, and "mantener" is its base (infinitive) form, in case you want to recognize the family it belongs to. A different sentence, "Despiértame before noon," returns "Wake me · despertar" the same way. That's the whole entry — no example sentence, because the sentence is already the page in front of you. For the full setup from unboxing to first lookup, see reading a blended book on CrossPoint, step by step.
The meaning is the one the sentence used, not the dictionary's favorite one#
Ordinary bilingual dictionaries lead with one sense, usually whichever is most common across every way a word gets used — sometimes the wrong one for the exact sentence you're reading. "Sueño" is the clean example: it means both "dream" and "sleep", and a general dictionary has to offer you both and let you pick. A companion dictionary isn't a general dictionary at all; it's generated from the blend itself, the same contextual selection that chose the word in the first place, so it only ever shows the sense that sentence actually used. In a book where "sueño" is always the noun for "dream," never "sleep," looking it up anywhere in that book returns "dream," every time.
A word looked up out of context is a guess at what you might need; a word looked up from a sentence you're already reading is a fact about that sentence. The companion dictionary is built on the second kind, and nothing is re-translated or guessed at to get it.
Phrases and idioms, looked up as one#
A blend doesn't only swap single words — an idiom or a phrasal verb is translated as a complete unit, because translating its pieces separately usually produces nonsense. The companion dictionary keeps that unit together: a phrase blended as one piece is looked up as one piece, with its own in-context meaning. How much of it you can select at once depends on firmware:
| Firmware | What you can look up at once |
|---|---|
| 1.6.x (current stable) | One word. A blended phrase is not directly selectable; tapping one of its words usually still surfaces the phrase, otherwise you see that word's own meaning |
| 1.7 and newer (Nightly build) | A whole phrase, by dragging the handles across it before choosing Look Up |
The gestures themselves are in the step-by-step guide.
Nothing is broken on 1.6.x — you simply can't drag a selection across several words yet, so a phrase sometimes falls back to one of its pieces instead of the whole thing.
One dictionary at a time#
A reader has exactly one dictionary active, and while a LingoBlend companion dictionary is selected, that's the only one it consults. Look up any word the blend didn't touch — an ordinary word in the language you already read — and you'll get "not found." That's expected, not a bug: the companion dictionary only knows the words this particular book blended in.
When you finish the book, go back to Settings → Reader → Dictionary and switch back to whatever you normally use. There's no dictionary yet that merges a general dictionary with a book's companion one, so pick whichever one answers what you're reading right now.
Where your dictionary comes from#
The companion dictionary is built for exactly one of the three blended editions: underlined, where blended words sit silent until you look them up. Glosses above and linked need no dictionary at all — one prints the answer directly on the page, the other jumps straight to a glossary entry — so check the full comparison if you're still deciding which edition to read.
Where the file itself comes from depends on the book:
- Free library books come with a dictionary built in advance, downloadable alongside the book — no account needed. Today's Great Gatsby dictionary, for example, is a small download holding 4,633 entries — one for each distinct word that book's blend used, not one per occurrence.
- A book you blend yourself on Pro gets a dictionary built from that run — generated from your own text, in your own chosen language, at your own percentage, and yours alone.
Either way the file is small, because it only holds the words one specific blend used, never a general vocabulary.
Three ways to get the dictionary onto your reader#
- USB, with the book. Connect by USB (Home → File Transfer → USB Drive), put the
.epubinBooks, and unzip the dictionary intodictionariesso you end up with a single folder,/dictionaries/lingoblend-…/, holding its three files together. Eject, then pick it once under Settings → Reader → Dictionary. - The LingoBlend Dictionaries plugin (CrossPoint 1.7 or a Nightly build). No sign-in needed. In the reader's File Transfer web UI, open Plugin Store, add our catalog URL, then Settings → System → Plugins → LingoBlend Dictionaries — "Free library" or "My dictionaries" — and it downloads straight into
/dictionaries, no cable involved. Its card in the web UI can also show and switch which dictionary is active. The plugin is a direct download on the e-readers page too, for a reader that is not on WiFi. - With a Pro book, over WiFi. On 1.7 or a Nightly build, pair your reader once and sign in through the LingoBlend plugin; after that, a book you blend appears in its list and downloads itself over WiFi, and its dictionary arrives under LingoBlend Dictionaries → My dictionaries. Books can also reach a reader over OPDS, but dictionaries can't: that protocol only carries books, so the dictionary still needs USB or the plugin. Without a paired reader, both files also wait as short-lived download links on the website, which you can request again if they expire.
What this doesn't do#
A companion dictionary only explains words a blend touched — it isn't a general dictionary for the language, and it won't help with a word the author wrote that the blend left alone. On current stable firmware, selecting more than one word at a time isn't possible, so some phrases fall back to a single word's meaning until you're on 1.7 or a Nightly build — the same release both plugins need, so on 1.6.x the USB route above is the only way to get a dictionary onto the reader. And switching dictionaries is manual: nothing remembers "use this one for this book," so finishing a blended book means a trip back to Settings before your usual dictionary works on anything else.
The takeaway#
The companion dictionary isn't a feature CrossPoint had to build — it's a file shaped to fit a lookup the firmware already has. That's also why it stays small, free for the shared library, and delivered over WiFi once you've paired a reader: it only ever has to answer for the words one specific blend put on the page, in the sense that blend actually gave them.