Highlight to Pronounce: Merriam-Webster + Google (Multilingual) TTS 💬

🌍 Multilingual Pronunciation

Choose from 27 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Thai, Ukrainian, Bengali, Urdu, and more.

English: Merriam-Webster pronunciation with Google TTS fallback.
Other languages: Google TTS only.

⚡ Simple to Use

Highlight a word or short phrase while reviewing, then:

• Click the floating speaker button
• Press your customizable hotkey — q by default
• Or enable automatic playback after highlighting

1. Highlight a single word

Highlight a word such as hemorrhage or thrombocytopenic. The add-on first tries to find a Merriam-Webster recording for that exact word. If it cannot retrieve one, Google TTS pronounces the word.

Best for: focusing on the pronunciation of one unfamiliar term.

2. Highlight a whole phrase — the default behavior

The add-on first checks whether Merriam-Webster has a recording of the entire phrase. If it does, it plays that recording. Otherwise, Google TTS reads the phrase as a whole for smoother, more natural sentence rhythm.

No setting change is needed. Complete Merriam-Webster phrase recordings are checked in both playback modes.

3. Optional: play a phrase using individual word recordings

Enable “Play phrases using individual word recordings” in Config.

If Merriam-Webster has no recording of the whole phrase, the add-on tries to find a recording for each word and plays them one after another.

For example, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura can be played as three separate dictionary recordings:

thrombotic → thrombocytopenic → purpura

The benefit: individual dictionary recordings may give better pronunciation of unfamiliar or specialized medical terms than text-to-speech.

The tradeoff: the recordings may use different voices, and the pauses and sentence rhythm may sound less natural than a phrase spoken all at once.

This option is off by default and supports phrases of 2–8 words. If any word lacks a usable recording, Google TTS reads the whole phrase.

No extra pause is added between ordinary words. Commas do not interfere with individual word lookups and add a slightly longer pause. Silence already present in the original recordings may still be audible.

💡 English Accuracy Tip

Highlighting one word at a time is useful when you want to focus on a specific pronunciation. If an inflected word falls back to Google TTS, try its singular or base form — for example, murmur instead of murmurs.

This is a helpful tip, not a requirement: some plural forms, related words, and complete phrases also have Merriam-Webster recordings.

⚙️ Configuration

Open Tools → Add-ons, select Highlight to Pronounce, then click Config.

To enable individual recordings for phrases, check “Play phrases using individual word recordings” under Pronunciation behavior.

Use the Test pronunciation tab to compare the modes. Enable audio-source notifications to see whether a pronunciation came from Merriam-Webster or Google TTS.

What’s New in This Update

• Improved matching for related words listed within another dictionary entry, such as thrombocytopenic.
• Exact Merriam-Webster phrase recordings are checked before Google TTS in both playback modes.
• Added optional word-by-word phrase playback, off by default.
• Added comma-aware pauses for individual word recordings.
• Removed the added delay between ordinary recorded words.
• Improved handling of HTML entities and nonbreaking spaces.
• Fixed overlapping pronunciation tests caused by repeated Enter presses.
• Stopped pending review pronunciations from playing after leaving the review screen.