Yesterday, I saw a tweet in which someone referred to Marcin Borkowski’s 2017 post on using the Webster 1923 dictionary in Emacs. Why would you want to do that? The answer to that is given in James Somers’ 2014 post, You’re Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary that I wrote about in 2015.
Since I wrote about it, I’ve been using the Webster dictionary to help me find just the right word. At first, I just used the Web site as Borkowski did but when that disappeared, I followed Borkowski’s simple instructions and installed it locally. Using sdcv-mode, it’s available directly from Emacs. If you write at all and would like to do a better job of it, you should consider installing it too. I can’t overemphasize what a great resource it is.
If this is the first time you’ve come across the Webster 1923 dictionary, do yourself a favor and read Somer’s post. It’s beautifully written and makes a strong case for using the dictionary. Integrating it into Emacs is easy and even if you’re not an Emacs user, you can still use it from the command line. If you’re a Mac user, you can install sdcv from Homebrew.