Verba ships with a large offline dictionary, but no dictionary covers every word two people need. When you meet a word Verba doesn’t know, you can add it, and it’s yours from then on: searchable, reviewable, and available completely offline. You can add a word fully in one go, or save it in a second and finish it later.
Add a word from search
- Search for the word.
- If Verba doesn’t have it, tap Add “your word”. The button also appears under the results when none of them is quite what you meant, with the line Not what you’re looking for?
- Verba asks Which language is “your word”? Pick English, Galician or Spanish.
- The Add Word form opens with the word already in the right field, and Saved for later: “your word” at the top.
- Fill in English and at least one translation, Galician or Spanish.
- Tap Save.
The word is safe from the moment you pick its language. If you close the form halfway, it waits in Library → Unfinished, and tapping it there reopens the form where you left off.
Search isn’t the only way in. The Dictionary tab and the Library tab both have a + button in the toolbar that opens the same form, empty.
The form, one card per language
The form has a card for each language, so everything about the Galician word sits together, and the same for Spanish. English plus one translation is all Verba needs. Everything else is there for when you want it.
English
- Word: the English headword.
- Also: other English words that mean the same thing (like “sofa” for “couch”). Search matches these too.
- Part of speech: noun, verb, adjective and so on. It’s optional, but it shapes the rest of the form, down to the example text in each field.
Galician and Spanish, each with its own card:
- Word: the translation.
- Gender, for nouns with a single fixed gender, like agua (feminine). Set separately for each language.
- More opens the rest, only when you need it:
- Feminine form, for words that come in a real masculine/feminine pair, like Spanish perro/perra or Galician can/cadela. If a word only ever has one form, use Gender instead.
- Plural, only if the regular plural rule would be wrong for this word.
- Usage note, shown under the translation: the kind of aside a dictionary adds, like “also belo”.
- Pronunciation, in IPA.
Meaning: a definition plus English, Galician and Spanish example sentences, right on the form. Add another meaning opens a list for words with more than one sense.
Themes: tap Add Theme to file the word into the same theme lists the dictionary uses, so it shows up there and in themed review.
If the required fields aren’t filled in yet, the button reads Save for Later instead of Save, and everything you typed is kept in Library → Unfinished.
If you try to save a word that’s already in your dictionary with the same part of speech, Verba asks whether you meant to add it anyway rather than silently creating a duplicate. Spelling alone isn’t enough to count: drink the noun and drink the verb are separate entries, and the dictionary itself holds eighteen such pairs.
Save a word for later, in a second
Sometimes you only have a second: someone says a word at the market and you want to remember it. Save for Later keeps just the word, with nothing else to fill in, and it waits in Library → Unfinished until you have a minute.
- Ask Siri: “Save a word for later in Verba”.
- Or use the Save for Later action in Shortcuts, and put it on the Action Button for a single press.
- If you look a word up with Siri or Spotlight and Verba doesn’t have it, the result offers Save for Later too.
When you’re ready, open Library → Unfinished and tap the word to finish it in the full form.
Open the form from anywhere
To sit down and add a word properly, without searching first:
- Ask Siri: “Add a word to Verba”.
- Or add Verba’s Add Word button to Control Center (Settings app → Control Center → Add a Control). It opens Verba with the empty form already up.
Add a word from any other app
Select a word in Safari, Books or anywhere you can select text, tap Share, then Search in Verba. If Verba already knows the word, you see its entry right there, with a bookmark button to save it. If it doesn’t, tap Add “your word” to Verba. The word is saved on the spot, without leaving the app you’re in: you’ll see Added to Verba, and it waits in Library → Unfinished. Tap Finish It Now if you’d rather fill it in straight away.
A tip for building your own list
Add words as you meet them, not in a batch later. The moment right after you learn a word, from context, from a conversation, from something you read, is when it’s easiest to capture the translation you actually want, rather than the first one a dictionary offers. Save for Later exists for exactly that moment.