Read Moby-Dick in English — and understand every line.
Read “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville in English. Tap any word for its meaning, hear how it sounds, and save it to a memory-driven review schedule.
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DICTIONARY
TRANSLATION
apreciar, atesorar
to feel warm affection for; to hold something dear.
Tap a word for its translation and part of speech — then save it to your list.
The opening
How “Moby-Dick” begins
Call me Ishmael.
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
Public domain — the whole book is yours to read in the app.
Vocabulary
Words to know before you start
The 30 words you will meet most often in “Moby-Dick” at level B2 and above, with how many times each one appears.
- deck
- crew
- thus
- mate
- flask
- soul
- strike
- bow
- jaw
- cabin
- vessel
- bear
- creature
- vast
- heaven
- devil
- lance
- fellow
- float
- broad
- peculiar
- craft
- interval
- curious
- monster
- hoist
- circumstance
- noble
- mighty
- chase
The meanings here are the everyday ones. In the reader, tap a word to see the sense this sentence uses.
Grammar
Grammar you will meet in “Moby-Dick”
How much of each kind of grammar “Moby-Dick” uses, counted in the sentences the Reader marks: per 10,000 words, compared with the other books in the library.
- Relative clauses
- Passive voice
- Phrasal verbs
- -ing forms and to-infinitives
- Perfect tenses
- Modal verbs
- Reported speech
- Conditionals
Constructions to look for
- Past participle clause The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention.
- Be to + infinitive (passive) That to attempt it, would be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity.
- Verb + object + to-infinitive Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean!
Counted the way the Reader shows it: one card per construction in a sentence. Open the book in the Reader and tap a highlighted phrase to see the rule.
Library
What you get while you read
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Tap to translate
Tap any word to see what it means in this exact sentence — with pronunciation and a clear example.
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Save what matters
Add a word and it comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule timed to how memory actually works.
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Grammar in context
Notable structures light up in the text, with a short explanation tied to the sentence you're reading.
About the book
Why Moby-Dick is a great book to read in English
Call me Ishmael: a restless narrator ships out on a whaler whose captain has one purpose — revenge on the white whale that took his leg. Moby-Dick (1851) is the Everest of this library: enormous, digressive, magnificent. The 135 short chapters give you natural footholds for the climb.
On LangOrbit you read “Moby-Dick” with a safety net: the translation is one tap away when a sentence runs long, every word opens its meaning in context and can be saved for spaced-repetition review, and the grammar behind the trickier lines is explained right where you meet it.
Keep reading
More books to read in English
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Moby-Dick
Read “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville in English. Tap any word for its meaning, hear how it sounds, and save it to a memory-driven review schedule.
Read in the ReaderStart for free · no card, no signup wall