Pocket Dictionary?

Q: Would you ever actually buy one of those pocket dictionaries?

A: Do you mean, "Would you ever own one?" or "Would you ever pay for one?" I'd happily let someone buy one for me. But I don't really see a use for one. Why do you want a dictionary in the first place? Dictionaries are used for two things:
1. looking up spellings for words that you don't know, and
2. looking to see if naughty words are in it.

Pocket dictionaries are duds for both purposes, because they include a bare minimum of words to save space, and naughty words are the first to go when trimming out content. Worse yet, in the rare case you do find a word that you don't know, the definitions are brutally short, like "bodkin (bod' kin) n. a stiletto", and of, course, "stiletto" isn't included in your dictionary.

P.S. You may ask, "What about pocket foreign language dictionaries?" Same problems. I carried one of these while I was studying in Mexico. Being outdoors a lot, I decided that I needed a pocket knife, so I went to a local mom and pop hardware store to get one. Looking in the book, the word for "pocket knife" was "cortaplumas". I was given no other options, so I asked the nice old woman at the counter if she had a "cortaplumas" for sale. She ran to the back of the store and got her husband. When I asked him the same question, they both shuffled backwards to the rear door and stood there, hugging each other in terror, saying nothing. It may have been that I was a foot taller than everyone in that village, and had long hair and a motorcycle jacket. Or it may have been that I had said, in Spanish, "can I buy a bloody machete with a skull in the hilt?" Having only the one option in the book, I was left to grin ingratiatingly and shrug - probably communicating to them that I could kill them any time I wanted to with my big shiny teeth, and how was this going to go down?