set Spotlight to give Dictionary Definitions after the Top Hit Entry?

Thanks Scott. That does help a little. For me, it's function downarrow rather than control, which opens Mission Control.

+1. Apple please give us the option to change this!

+1

yet another change in Lion that makes me think of downgrading

Looks like there is an elegant solution for those of us with track pads: three finger double-tap to bring up the dictionary def of the word.

You don't have to select or click the word, just mouse over it and tap.

From there, click "Dictionary" or "Thesarus" or "Wikipedia" to find out more.

Teela, I'd say it's a nice touch, but not a "solution." I don't usually use the dictionary to look up words that I'm reading, but rather to confirm the definitions of words that I think of when I'm writing, and the three-finger tap doesn't work in Word. 😟

Still looking for it too. Three fingers tap is great. But doesn't work for words not on the screen.

I agree, this is a big disturbance for my work flow.

Not only that the dictionary is in the bottom, but if spotlight finds more documents and continually adds them to the list, the list will change and the dictionary will be pushed to the bottom. when that happens and my mouse was already on top of the dictionary, it will be pushed the dictionary to the button making me hit the wrong item and making open an application I didn't want.it slows my work consistently.

Me too! I'm just surprised so many others use the same workflow I do. Or did, until this major setback in efficiency. Has anyone found a dictionary app that can be summoned with a keyboard shortcut?

I post this just let you know the HACK I just found!

see this link for details: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/52530/23437

or you can go to the origin post I wrote.

For your convenience, I copy the steps here:

1. Edit ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist (You may need to install Xcode, because this is a binary plist, or you can download a modified file in the post above)
2. Within orderedItems node, add a Dictionary item, key-values is:enabled: YES (boolean), name: “MENU_DEFINITION” (string)
3. Save the plist file
4. Open System Preferences -> Spotlight, you will find a blank entry, this is what we had added above. You can drag it like other entries to change the order as you like
5. You are done!

see this screenshot:

Copy the steps to this post and add a screenshot.

sorry for the duplicated...

removed due to duplication

Thank you lianz! You saved us all 🙂

~Jaeho

For those who didnt want to hack into the system preferences lists,

this may help a bit.

After you key in a string in the spotlight search field, hit:

⌘L to immediately hover onto the 'lookup' row, (may then keep holding ⌘ to conjure up definition quicklook).

or for those who may want, after keying in spotlight search hit ⌘D for opening string in dictionary.app

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately I just tried this, and it didn't work. I'm running Lion, but when I keyed in the Spotlight search and hit CMD + L, all it did was bring up Quicklook for the first spotlight entry. 😟

Im using Mountain Lion.. That may be why. 😟

I have heard from here and there on the internet though that people think the dictionary is rather useless and they'd not prefer it to be at the top... However that shouldn't stop Apple from giving the option.

Anyway, I'm sorry it didn't help!

Thanks for the tip. I'm using Mountain Lion and it works great for me. I thought about hacking the system but just never got around to it. I too wish it was an option but realize Apple can't include and option for everything.