Abstract: An electronic dictionary having a keyboard with a plurality of character keys, a clear key and a definition key; a plurality of flip-flops each associated with one of the character keys for indicating the characters in an entered word; a counter for accumulating a count indicating the number of entered characters; a pulse generator enabled upon operation of the definition key to provide a pulse train to a further counter which disables the pulse generator upon a given count; decoder logic receiving as an input the outputs of the flip-flops and the outputs of the two counters to produce a sequence of character codes at an output as the further counter is incremented, such codes being stored in a register and applied to a conventional display to form a definition of an entered word and the clear key then being operated to reset the circuitry and blank the display.