The Dictionary Package

Bozhidar Batsov over at Emacs Redux has a nice post on looking up words in a dictionary with Emacs. The post is about the dictionary.el package that’s built into Emacs as of version 28. Dictionary is a package for talking to a dictionary server and provides a way to look up words in any of several dictionaries.

In Batsov’s case he only interested in being able to lookup the word at point so he’s bound dictionary-lookup-definition to Ctrl+c l to easily look up a word but the package can do a lot more as a glance at its GitHub page shows.

I prefer to use abo-abo’s define-word package for routine word lookups because it lists the results in the echo area rather than opening another buffer. I do use dictionary.el, though, for access to Webster’s 1913 dictionary. It’s really convenient because you don’t have to install anything to use it.

As Batsov explains, you can have local a local dictionary server and dictionaries or you can use the online dict.org. Since I virtually always have connectivity¹, I just use dict.org but the choice is up to you. You can also use any other dictionary server—local or remote—that you have access to.

If you use Emacs for more than just editing code, the ability to quickly and easily look up the definition of a word is a real benefit. And, as I said, it’s already there waiting to be used.