Static, offline, command-line CLI dictionary
Provide a word, get the definitions back in a tab-delimited table:
$ dictomatic.exe snag
snag noun an unforeseen obstacle -
snag noun an opening made forcibly as by pulling apart -
snag noun a sharp protuberance -
snag verb hew jaggedly -
snag verb catch on a snag I snagged my stocking
snag verb get by acting quickly and smartly snag a bargain
- Definitions from the Wordset Project, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
- Statically compiled, word lists are linked in. No dependencies. Just download an executable for your target platform.
- Fast; takes about 40 ms to emit the words. This makes it easy to drive from your editor, and will work offline.
Just download the executable. Check out the Releases tab.
The demo output further up looks a bit odd in the demo above because the
sections are separated by tabs \t. Tabs work well as a separator in
text-based applications because they almost never appear in text. This
output format is designed to be easy to use in unix command-line pipelines.
There are always four sections (separated by tabs) in each line:
WORD POS DEFINITION EXAMPLE
snag verb get by acting quickly and smartly snag a bargainIf a section is missing, it will appear as a single -. For instance, there
are not example usages of snag in the noun form, but there is one example
usage for snag as a verb: snag a bargain.
Multiple words are supported, because it might be convenient to see a bunch of related definitions at the same time:
$ dictomatic.exe word wordy words
word noun a unit of language that <snip> Words are the blocks from which sentences<snip>
word noun information about recent<snip What's the word on the new smart phone?
word noun a secret word or phrase <snip> I forgot the word, but can you still let me in?
word noun a brief statement I didn't say a word about it to anyone.
word noun an exchange of views on <snip> We sat down and had words about politics.
word noun a verbal command for act<snip> When I give the word, charge!
word noun a highly valued promise I gave my word to you, yet you still mana<snip>
word noun a string of bits stored <snip> Large computers use words up to 64 bits long.
word verb to put into words or an <snip> I worded my apology badly.
wordy adjective using or containing too many words -
words noun language that is spoken <snip> They have a gift for words.
words noun words making up the dial<snip> -
words noun the text of a popular so<snip> -
words noun the words that are spoken I listened to their words very closely.
words noun an angry dispute -
This is why the the word itself appears in the results: so that downstream pipeline applications can do things with it.
If you don't supply any words as arguments, it will read a list of words from
stdin. For instance, given a file test.txt with contents rust\ngold:
$ cat test.txt | dictomatic.exe
rust adjective of the brown color of rust -
rust noun any of various fungi causing rust disease in plants <all snipped>
rust noun the formation of reddish-brown ferric oxides on iron
rust noun a plant disease that produces a reddish-brown discol
rust noun a red or brown oxide coating on iron or steel caused
rust verb become coated with oxide -
rust verb become destroyed by water, air, or a corrosive such
rust verb cause to deteriorate due to the action of water, air
gold adjective having the deep slightly brownish color of g
gold adjective made from or covered with gold gold coins
gold noun a deep yellow color -
gold noun something likened to the metal in brightness or prec
gold noun great wealth Whilst that for which all virtue now
gold noun coins made of gold -
gold noun a soft yellow malleable ductile (trivalent and univa
This means that other programs that can emit "one word per line" can feed that output into dictomatic.
Take advantage of CLI filters! How about extracting only the parts of speech:
$ dictomatic.exe jump | cut -f2
noun
noun
noun
noun
noun
noun
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
verb
Count the parts of speech (awk NF to drop the blank line):
$ dictomatic.exe jump | awk NF | cut -f2 | sort | uniq -c
6 noun
15 verbFilter definitions and extract the definition only:
$ dictomatic.exe jump | grep attack | cut -f3
make a sudden physical attack onExtract only definitions and remove punctuation:
$ dictomatic.exe jump | cut -f3 | tr -d [:punct:]
the act of jumping
descent with a parachute
a sudden involuntary movement
film an abrupt transition from one scene to another
an abrupt transition
a sudden and decisive increase
go back and forth
rise in rank or status
increase suddenly and significantly
pass abruptly from one state or topic to another
bypass
enter eagerly into
make a sudden physical attack on
start a car engine whose battery is dead by connecting it to another cars battery
move or jump suddenly as if in surprise or alarm
move forward by leaps and bounds
cause to jump or leap
jump from an airplane and descend with a parachute
run off or leave the rails
jump down from an elevated point
be highly noticeable
Extract only usage-examples (filtering out -), with the part-of-speech
in trailing brackets:
$ dictomatic.exe jump | awk NF | awk -F '\t' '$4!="-"{ print $4 " [" $2 "]" }'
a jump in attendance [noun]
My new novel jumped high on the bestseller list. [verb]
Prices jumped overnight [verb]
We jumped into the game. [verb]
The muggers jumped the couple coming out of the gallery. [verb]
the trainer jumped the tiger through the hoop [verb]
the parachutist didn't want to jump [verb]The full roundtrip, where we
- find definitions of "jump",
- filter those by appearance of the word "sudden",
- remove punctuation,
- convert spaces to newlines (so each word in the definition is on its own line),
- remove duplicates,
- filter for words longer than 8 characters,
- and feed back into dictomatic for definitions of those words!!
$ dictomatic.exe jump \
| cut -f3 \
| grep sudden \
| tr -d [:punct:] \
| tr [:blank:] '\n' \
| sort -u \
| awk 'length($0) > 8' \
| dictomatic.exe
involuntary adjective not subject to the control of the will involuntary manslaughter
involuntary adjective controlled by the autonomic nervous system -
significantly adverb in a significant manner our budget will be significantly affected by these new cuts
significantly adverb in an important way or to an important degree -
significantly adverb in a statistically significant way the two groups differed significantly