20 May 2005 08:05 am
MeDic
[Last updated November 25, 2008 @ 08.51am EST]
Welcome to MeDic!
MeDic is a free medical spell check dictionary for Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org, and anything else that uses plain text files as user-created dictionaries.
If you think it's useful to you or someone you know, please bookmark it, Stumble it, or even throw me a link to the MeDic main page:
Here is the second version (0.0.2) for Microsoft Office. MeDic has 66,239 words — nowhere near a comprehensive word list, though much closer than the 0.0.1 version. If you have word additions or suggestions, please visit my contributions page. The only way MeDic is going to grow and be more useful is if I get help from other people. Stedman's has 500,000 words or so — and it also costs an arm and a leg — so if I could reach 100,000, I'd be pretty happy.
I have put in quite a bit of effort to make sure that things that should be capitalized are — people's names, name-brand drugs, etc. — so that they will be flagged as incorrect if they are not capitalized properly in your document. There are no duplicate entries that I am aware of; if you find any, please let me know.
If you're using a modern version of Microsoft Office (2007, 2008 on a Mac), you will probably want the Unicode encoding, as Office no longer supports traditional ANSI encoding. If you download the Unicode version and it doesn't work, go ahead and grab the smaller version. The wordlists are identical — only the text encoding is different, even though the filesizes are somewhat different.
MeDic custom dictionary (Unicode encoding) (285KB)
MeDic custom dictionary (244KB)
MeDic pages:
A note on accuracy:
I have endeavored to make sure that all words are spelled correctly, opting to remove a word entirely if I wasn't 100% certain that it was right. It's better to be incomplete than inaccurate. Nonetheless, there may be some mistakes. If you find any, please let me know.
Some users of MeDic have contributed localizations for the dictionary, as well:
Russell Butler's Australian localization: local mirror | JustLocal mirror | OpenOffice 3.0 extension. He writes:
I have attached a copy of the word list, largely derived from yours, with a few modifications. I have tried to limit it to acceptable Australian spellings, so that if used only "valid" words are offered as substitutes. I know that some usages are uncertain, and I will attempt to see if I can get some help in checking them, notably sulfur vs sulphur in compound words, levo- vs laevo etc.
I think there are a few additional words. I have not checked all the trade names for what is available here. I have taken out (mostly) "part words" as the OpenOffice.org dictionary doesn't know how to use these. It deals only with "whole" words, except that it can use a suffix file, but I am not up to editing that. it also has problems with hyphenated words, so I have split some of them, though I have left quite a few, in the hope that this may improve with later versions.
MeDic is licensed under a CreativeCommons license. Some rights reserved.
on 20 May 2005 at 10:57 am 1.rianjs.net » The medical dictionary is now available for download said …
[...] ble for download Filed under: Personal — Rian @ 10:57 am I finally released MeDic this morning. It's completely free and has about 41,000 words. I'm going to make it larger over time, [...]
on 24 Jul 2005 at 6:55 pm 2.rianjs.net » WTF Google? said …
[...] eRank update. I was just poking around rianjs.net here and I noticed that the PageRank for MeDic is 5. WTF? Why? I don't get it. No Comments » No commen [...]
on 08 Jan 2006 at 9:09 am 3.Sturgeon the Surgeon's Ramblings said …
Medical dictionary for use in Word…
I've always had problems writing medical related work because the dicitonary in MS Word was rubbish. Thankfully someone else has done all the hard work and created a cusotm medical dictionary:
…
on 22 Jan 2006 at 9:43 am 4.UCL Medical student Blog said …
Medical dictionary…
Great little find. For use in applications that allow you to use a custom dictionary, such as MS Word etc.
http://rianjs.net/medic/
Please visit and download,……
on 03 Mar 2006 at 3:16 pm 5.Spelling said …
It is nice to see good quality information available. Keep it up . Many thanks.
on 22 Oct 2006 at 9:45 am 6.Michael Segal said …
We have a list of medical terms at:
http://www.simulconsult.com/support/tablet/index.html
The list of terms was prepared for users of Tablet PCs who are using our medical diagnostic software, but it is fine to add them to MeDic. The terms focus mainly on neurological diseases, but since they comprise about 25% of all diseases this may be helpful to people in many medical areas.
There are many proper names included because many syndromes are named after people.
on 23 Jan 2007 at 1:11 pm 7.Evan said …
Sure, sign me up for the updates. Thanks for the work.
on 23 Jan 2007 at 1:13 pm 8.Evan said …
Oops, sorry. Could you remove these replies? I just wanted to sign up. Guess I need to read the directions better
on 01 May 2007 at 8:00 pm 9.transcriptionist said …
Thank you for the dictionary! My wife is a medical transcriptionist student and this will be a great help to her. She too has been clicking "add word to dictionary" almost constantly.
I did not see how you accepted submissions of words to you to add to your dictionary. I will gladly validate my wife's custom dictionary periodically and send you her additions.
Below are the only three she had added that are not in your dictionary:
hysterosalpingogram
transcriptionist
yeastlike
on 02 May 2007 at 10:35 am 10.Rian said …
You're welcome.
I never added any functionality to submit words to the dictionary — completely forgot about it, in fact…
in the meantime, you can email me submissions — the emails in the upper right corner…
on 09 May 2007 at 3:02 am 11.Russell Butler said …
Hi Rian
I left a personal note a couple of days ago about possibly using your list of words as a contribution to an OpenOffice.org Medical dictionary.
A major question was the matter of licensing.
Have you had any thoughts about this yet?
on 23 Jun 2007 at 9:53 pm 12.Mortaza said …
tanks
on 26 Jun 2007 at 1:55 pm 13.Ryan said …
I have a word for the dictionary…its a sports word so you might not like it. but people where im from love it.
vesatoskular-to excell in the position of goaltending in ice hockey.
If you dont know it comes from Leaf's (past Shark's) goalie Vesa Toskala. The word is a combination of of his two names.
on 26 Jun 2007 at 5:14 pm 14.Daniel said …
Thanks for the MeDic wordlist. It's very useful.
I find that OpenOffice OOo specialty user dictionary has a 2000 word limit. How do we deal with that? I've looked in OOo site and found others complaining of this 2000 word limit, but no solution.
on 08 Jul 2007 at 11:09 am 15.Travis N said …
There is another free medical dictionary at:
http://www.e-medtools.com/openmedspel.html
There are versions for openoffice and thunderbird. It says it is based on their $15 purchase version for MS Word that supposedly contains all FDA drug and device approvals up to release date (June 2007) for a total of approximately 50,000 terms. It is released under GPL.
..any chance of a collaborative effort to create a more complete dictionary for users of both?
on 30 Oct 2007 at 9:16 am 16.devesh said …
basically, i dunno how but my all.dic is now 11megs large with over 400k words…
i think it may have absorbed words off stedmans or something like that…anwyays, would u like me to send it to ya it mite be of some use
thanks for the amazing dictionary btw, it is incredibly useful
on 18 Mar 2008 at 6:08 pm 17.Russell Butler said …
Hi again Rian
I just came back and had another look at your list, and it looks very useful. I think I explained that I had developed a (much more limited) Australian medical word list. This is available at http://www.justlocal.com.au/clients/oooau/#Australian_Medical_Dictionary
in case there is anything you may find usable. Unfortunately that is a "munched" version, but I can send a "raw" text version if you wish.
I am just a little concerned about your Creative Commons Licence "not for commercial use." As I think I mentioned earlier, many people like me use their word processor for "commercial" purposes, in the sense of paid work. Some may feel that was not allowed by your licence. I think you probably mean that no one should take your list and sell it, and I am quite happy with that.
If I were to "translate" your list into Australian usage, and give you credit as an important source, would that be OK with you?
on 22 Mar 2008 at 8:47 am 18.Rian said …
Russell,
I will take a look at your words and see about adding them to MeDic.
As for commercial purposes, that's more that I don't want people profiting directly from my work. E.g.: copying the words and selling them as their own payware dictionary product. If you use the dictionary in a commercial environment, that's cool with me.
Spread the word. I'd love to see more people use it (and possibly add words, too).
on 24 Mar 2008 at 2:11 pm 19.HJ said …
Wonderful,
Great initiative,
Keep up the good work!!!
(if you will, you can leave a donation link or address. I understand you are not putting this up for money, but that is one way of saying thanks by us users.
HJ
on 26 Mar 2008 at 2:33 am 20.Russell Butler said …
Thanks, Rian, I thought that would be your response.
I'm working through your list removing the words I already have, unfortunately I haven't developed a method of eliminating duplicates automatically.
I see a lot of words using the UK/Australian spellings which I have left in, and deleted (most ? some? of) the US versions.
Hopefully over the next week or so I'll merge it with my collection and let you have it. I'll send with it just my own word list separately so you can play with that.
Regards
Russell
on 05 Apr 2008 at 12:11 pm 21.Rian said …
HJ, that had not occurred to me. I will look into doing so after I get my new theme up and running.
on 15 Apr 2008 at 4:20 pm 22.devesh said …
did u manage to use that massive list i sent you in october/november 07. i ended up pulling it out of the custom dic list as it was too large for word to process… each time i added a new word it would lock up for 2secs!
ps, the release format you have given does not i think work with word 07, i vaguely remember having to do something to the list to get it to work.
thanks again
on 10 Jul 2008 at 7:14 am 23.Gokul said …
Hey nice work dude.
find it very useful.
The dictionary has to be opened by notepad ans saved in a unicode format for it to work with Word 2007 guys.
Keep it up.
on 22 Jul 2008 at 6:00 pm 24.Custom Word medical spell check dictionary updated :: OnThePharm said …
[...] have updated MeDic with a new version. 0.0.2 brings the dictionary from 41,009 words up to [...]
on 08 Sep 2008 at 12:44 pm 25.Renee said …
Thanks for the site. I am doing Medical Transcription and I am sure this will help a lot.
Sometimes you become braindead when typing reports.
on 09 Sep 2008 at 2:22 pm 26.westernLil said …
I have OpenOffice on my U3 Cruzer Scandisk. Is it still possible to install MeDic on my computer and open it up with the OpenOffice on the Scan Disk with U3?
on 22 Nov 2008 at 8:05 pm 27.Rob said …
Thanks so much for the site, I'm a Med student, and have worn my "right click" out on my laptop with adding words. I have 3 med dictionaries and none have a disc with any type of list to add to word! Thanks a ton! I will try to weed through my custom.dic and send it your way to add to the list.
on 25 Nov 2008 at 8:56 am 28.Rian said …
I have uploaded a newer version of MeDic with Unicode encoding for the newer versions of Office (2007 and 2008).
on 25 Nov 2008 at 9:13 am 29.rianjs.net » MeDic: minor update said …
[...] MeDic main page [...]
on 10 Dec 2008 at 9:45 am 30.Patrick said …
THANK YOU!!!
I have Stedmans, but it doesn't play nicely with my computer. Doesn't install well, and sometimes refuses to work. Plus I'd rather use OpenOffice.
This solves many problems for me.
on 20 Dec 2008 at 11:57 pm 31.Jeff said …
Just wanted to say thank you. What an awesome project and thanks for sharing. This helps so much.
on 25 Dec 2008 at 11:47 pm 32.Vishal said …
Hey… This is awesome – just what I've been looking for. Thanks for making it. It's so easy to install and works perfectly!!
on 13 Jan 2009 at 5:11 pm 33.humayun said …
wonderful work. Nobody needs 500,000 words! My only request. Is it possible to convert it to mac OS X speller so it can be used on all other software of the mac as well i.e. pages, keynote etc. these programs use the OS X dictionaries and custom spellers. At the moment only mac office can use it.
on 14 Jan 2009 at 1:23 pm 34.Craig said …
Looks to me like you have the word rhonchus but not the plural rhonchi.
Also, pansystolic as in a pansystolic murmur.
I will let you know if I find more.
on 14 Jan 2009 at 3:23 pm 35.Rian said …
Thanks, I will add those in.
on 14 Jan 2009 at 6:04 pm 36.Craig said …
Also, I forgot to say thanks. Amazing tool you gave me for free.
on 30 Jan 2009 at 2:22 pm 37.Craig said …
You are also missing aeruginosa, as in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Thanks again
on 18 Feb 2009 at 9:29 am 38.Jonathan said …
You have just saved 86 PA students from wasting hours with double checking our spelling in google before handing in assignments. This also fits the bill as we are not yet raking it in. Thanks!!!
on 18 Feb 2009 at 10:27 am 39.Rian said …
Glad to be of help.
on 24 Feb 2009 at 1:58 am 40.It’s Not All Puppies and Kittens − And the tarsus is connected to the…metatarsus said …
[...] but never did anything about it. However, I've just come across a custom dictionary called MeDic. I have just installed it and like magic, it's reduced the number of red squiggles under [...]
on 16 Apr 2009 at 7:47 am 41.Christy said …
This has been a life saver! My computer crashed and I had three years worth of medical terminology and medications on there! Thanks so much!
on 18 Apr 2009 at 10:21 am 42.Ed Hirschprung said …
I must say I agree with you, even though not totally. We are putting together a non-profit website that will include links to useful websites such as yours. It is still under development, if you are interested please take a look http://usmle-usmle.org
on 22 Apr 2009 at 3:43 pm 43.Katie Jayne said …
Thanks so much for this! I just stumbled across this. I knew someone, somewhere, had to of thought of doing something like this! I'm just starting out in medical transcription and this is a life saver! Thank you again!
on 12 May 2009 at 12:12 am 44.D said …
This product is very useful. Thanks.
One suggestion: The utility is very much compromised by the fact you do not list plurals for many words. This still means Word recognises them as potential errors, and they need to be manually checked…
eg: Biguanides, Craniopharyngiomas, etc etc etc
Also: link to Russel Butler's Australian version not working.
Good luck!
on 18 May 2009 at 4:57 am 45.DW said …
Thank you kindly
on 12 Jun 2009 at 11:00 am 46.Katie said …
Thank you so much! I am a spelling fanatic so it was really annoying to me that Word underlined medical terms as spelling mistakes. This dictionary worked like a charm and I am forever grateful! Great job!
on 22 Sep 2009 at 9:14 am 47.Anne E said …
Absolutely loved this, saved me constantly trying to update the silly dictionary that comes with word!
Does anyone know if there's a way to use this dictionary in powerpoint's spellchecking? I can't find a way to add a custom dictionary in that program, but as I do presentations often enough, it'd be nice to not have to start adding words to that dictionary…
Thanks,
Anne
on 22 Sep 2009 at 9:47 am 48.Rian said …
Anne,
This link from Microsoft may help.
on 22 Sep 2009 at 10:03 am 49.Anne E said …
Unfortunately that seems to be geared for the 2007 version…can't seem to make that work in the 2003 version (there isn't a proof tab in the options on 2003). Any other thoughts?
on 22 Sep 2009 at 10:16 am 50.Rian said …
Apparently 2003 doesn't support custom dictionaries the way Word does. You may be able to manually open the PowerPoint main dictionary and paste them there, but if I recall correctly, the built-in dictionary isn't stored in plain text format like custom dictionaries. I don't use Office 2003 anymore, so I can't be sure…
on 22 Sep 2009 at 10:19 am 51.Anne E said …
Appreciate your help though…I'm just stuck with what my workplace has right now…*sigh* they'll eventually upgrade.
In the mean time, I'm really thankful that word 2003 does accept custom dictionaries!
Thanks for this!!!
on 30 Sep 2009 at 2:39 pm 52.kind of strange request, Medical Dictionary for MS word 2007 - Digital World Cable Satellite Console Forum said …
[...] ages, its when u add them to your custom dictionary. Have u seen this? dunno if its gonna help ya rianjs.net MeDic __________________ Remember people dont forget to rep people where their post has helped you in [...]