Webster’s Dictionary Defines

As a student at university, you should know the base meaning of words and treat that as a given. If you don’t know the meaning of a word, you should definitely look it up. But you should not treat looking a word up as though that were university-level research, rather than you getting caught up on things that ideally you should have already known.

And you should not make matters even worse by using the all-too-common student technique of writing “Webster’s dictionary defines…” in an assignment.

If the meaning of a word is straightforwardly defined by consulting a dictionary, then you don’t need to include the definition. And if the definition of a concept is disputed, or your reading for a class advocates reinterpreting a particular term, then referring to the dictionary won’t help you.