Comment by cosmojg
4 years ago
For those who want to know why this is important, check out this blog post: https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary
For those who want to give it a try on other operating systems, check out this website: https://www.websters1913.com/
Probably worth pointing out that dict, dictd, and web1913 have been included with Debian since last millennium. (The dict markup shows in the screenshot on https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary; dict and vh are the things that use {} to delimit references to other entries. Even the line breaks are preserved.) They don't have the nice CSS tho.
debian's adherence to ASCII-like typography probably killed a lot of information though
Howso?
3 replies →
FWIW the relevant Debian or Ubuntu package is dict-gcide these days, no longer dict-web1913.
That was quite informative, although to me, as a non-native English speaker, the basic descriptions are often more useful. It seems to make sense for the definition to be written in simpler terms then the term it defines. But I can see the appeal for someone looking to make their use of language less blunt.
The most useful part in my opinion is the discussion of how the word differs from synonyms. That should be a much bigger emphasis in modern dictionaries and thesauruses. Unfortunately many definitions from 1913 are already becoming out-of-date.
I think a similar take was taken by the Japanese dictionary, Shin Meikai Kokugo Jiten.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Meikai_kokugo_jiten