Notes on Offline English Dictionaries

Install dictd, and configure it to use offline dictionaries.

To use dict with dmenu, create an index. The following assumes that you are using the WordNet dictionary.

cd ~/.local/state
cp /usr/share/dictd/wn.index .
sed "s/	.*//g" wn.index | sort -n > wn.tmp && mv wn.tmp wn.index

Note that in the sed command above, there is a tab, but your browser might show a space. If you copy it to your clipboard, it should work regardless.

To use this with sxhkd:

alt + shift + d
	definition="$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/dmenu_dict"; \
	dict "$(dmenu -i -l 10 < $XDG_STATE_HOME/wn.index)" > "$definition"; \
	[ -s "$definition" ] && st less -+F -c "$definition"

2025 Aug 8th: I switched back to sdcv since the AUR has a repository with only the WordNet files without its programs.

alt + d
	def="$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/sdcv"; \
	sdcv -n "$(:|dmenu -p "Define:")" > "$def"; \
	[ -s "$def" ] && st less "$def"

I no longer use the following hacky setup with GCIDE. Its custom markup sucks.

cd gcide
for f in CIDE*; do; mv $f "${f#*.}"; done
mkdir info; find -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -name "?" -exec mv {} info \;
find -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec sh -c 'sed "s/<ldquo\//<q>/g; s/<rdquo\//<\/q>/g" "$1" > tmp && mv tmp "$1" || rm tmp' echo {} \;
sed "s/<ent> /<ent>/" K > K.tmp && mv K.tmp K
def word # or dmenu_def, shell scripts below, licensed under BSD0
# repeat the following to replace GCIDE's non-standard markup while referencing webfont.txt
find -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec sh -c 'sed "s/<cced\//ç/g; s/<Cced\//Ç/" "$1" > tmp && mv tmp "$1" || rm tmp' echo {} \;

#!/bin/sh -e

DICT="$HOME/data/books/dictionary"

phrase="${*:-$(cat)}"
# e.g. gum ammoniac is with dictionary entries that start with A
[ "$phrase" = "-t" ] && { thorough=1; phrase="$(cat)"; }
phrase="$(printf "%s" "$phrase" | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' | sed 's=\\=\\\\=g; s=\/=\\\/=g')"

letter="$(printf "%.1s" "$phrase")"
case "$letter" in
  "'") end="${phrase#?}"; letter="${end%"${end#?}"}" ;; # second char
  "-") search_files="$(grep -irl "<ent>$phrase</ent>" "$DICT")" ;;
  ".") letter="V" ;;
  [0-9]|"\\") letter="A" ;;
esac

: "${search_files="$DICT/$letter"}"
definitions="$(printf "%s\n" "$search_files" | xargs sed -n "/<ent>$phrase<\/ent>/I,/^$/p")"
[ "$thorough" ] && [ -z "$definitions" ] && {
  search_files="$(grep -irl "<ent>$phrase</ent>" "$DICT")"
  definitions="$(printf "%s\n" "$search_files" | xargs sed -n "/<ent>$phrase<\/ent>/I,/^$/p")"
}

printf "%s" "$definitions" | w3m -dump -T text/html

#!/bin/sh -e

DICT="$HOME/data/books/dictionary"
CACHE="${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/dmenu_def"

[ -f "$CACHE" ] || grep -orh --exclude-dir=info "<ent>.*</ent>" "$DICT" |
  sed "s/<.\?ent>//g" | sort -n | uniq > "$CACHE"

dmenu -i -l 10 < "$CACHE" | def -t