Education is a very important aspect of our day-to-day life: we want our children to grow up to be strong, healthy and intelligent members of the society, and we want to have an elevated vocabulary so that we can understand everything that is being said to us. The iPhone can be of help, via an iPhone app of course: for the children there is the Curious George's Dictionary for iPhone and iPod Touch app; for the grownup there is Dictionary.com.

The Curious George's Dictionary iPhone app has been developed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and ScrollMotion, and it transports the classic educational book to the Apple developed smartphone in an effort to get children to improve their vocabulary. And it will only set you back $9,99 in the iTunes App Store.

Chief Creative Officer and Co-founder of ScrollMotion comments: “We're thrilled to introduce our first children's and education-based iPhone app to the world. The Curious George's Dictionary app is another great example of the iPhone as the ultimate all-in-one device. It takes advantage of the full functionality of the operating system, and brings the book to life in a way that is at once strikingly new and faithful to the original.”

That takes care of your child’s vocabulary skills, but what about your own? What will you do when someone tells you that Bob in accounting “impugned” you? The popular web page Dictionary.com has released a free iPhone app that should be of help – and will explain that impugn means “to attack by words or arguments; to call in question; to make insinuations against; to oppose or challenge as false; to gainsay”. Just like the web page itself, the iPhone app allows you to look up definitions and synonyms to words you are not quite sure what they mean. Compared to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary iPhone app which comes with a hefty price tag of about $25, the free Dictionary.com app is a bargain.