How to have a commandline dictionary using StarDict

If you spend a lot of time at the shell, you might prefer to look up the meaning of words from the commandline, rather than from a GUI program or in the browser. One solution is to use the console version of the StarDict program.

• Install: Installing in Ubuntu is easy:

$ sudo apt-get install sdcv

• Install dictionaries: You can find dictionaries that are English-English or between any two languages, encyclopedias, thesaurus or etymology sources online that can be installed to work with sdcv. For example, a few of such dictionaries can be found here. To install a dictionary, first create the /usr/share/stardict/dic directory. Next unzip the dictionary file and copy that directory to the above directory.

• List dictionaries: You can list the dictionaries that are installed using:

$ sdcv --list-dicts

• Lookup word: To look up a word:

$ sdcv mollify

Tried with: Console Version of StarDict 0.4.2 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS