dictionaryCLI

Look up words in the Cambridge Dictionary straight from your terminal - definitions, IPA pronunciations, example sentences, offline access, pronunciation audio, and your own vocabulary wordlists.

  apple  /ˈæp.əl/ UK  /ˈæp.əl/ US
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
noun [ C or U ]
  [A1] a round fruit with firm, white flesh and a green, red, or yellow skin
       • to peel an apple
       • apple pie
       • an apple tree

Features

• Lookup - definitions, UK/US IPA, grammar codes, CEFR levels (A1-C2), usage labels, guidewords, and example sentences, rendered with colors
• Search - website-style dropdown matches (dict search photogr), pick by arrow keys or -pN
• Interactive mode - a REPL for continuous lookups without re-launching
• Offline cache (opt-in) - save every word you look up and read them with no internet; background prefetching of related words while you browse
• Wordlists - star words, browse them in an arrow-key picker, export/import as plain text
• Audio - play real Cambridge UK/US pronunciations
• Bilingual dictionaries - look up English words with Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, and more; or point the other way (e.g. Chinese → English). Preference persists until you change it.
• Quiz (dict quiz) - MCQ flashcards from your starred words, both directions: definition → word and word → definition, with A/B/C/D arrow-key choices and a score. Bilingual mode (dict quiz --lang en-zhs) quizzes word ↔ translation using the saved language pair (fetching any missing bilingual copies first)
• Synonyms - entries show their thesaurus synonyms when Cambridge has them
• --json - machine-readable output for lookups and search

Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Install

With pipx (recommended):

pipx install git+https://github.com/HarvyLiu/dictionaryCLI.git

Or from a local clone:

git clone https://github.com/HarvyLiu/dictionaryCLI.git
cd dictionaryCLI
pipx install .

No pipx? A plain virtualenv works too:

cd dictionaryCLI
py -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate          # Windows  (source .venv/bin/activate on Unix)
pip install .

Usage

Command	What it does
dict apple	look up a word or phrase
dict apple --audio	look up and play UK pronunciation (--audio us for US)
dict search photogr	show matching words like the website dropdown
dict search photogr -p3	look up the 3rd match directly
dict add serendipity	star a word and always keep an offline copy
dict remove apple	unstar a word (alias: rm)
dict list	arrow-key browser for starred words; Enter looks one up
dict list --plain	plain-text listing instead of the picker
dict lang list	show all language pairs
dict lang en zhs	set pair: English → Chinese Simplified (persists)
dict 苹果 --lang zhs-en	one-shot reverse lookup, no preference change
dict quiz	MCQ quiz from starred words (dict quiz 20 for 20 questions)
dict quiz --lang en-zhs	bilingual quiz: word ↔ translation
dict export my-words.txt	write your wordlist as plain text
dict import my-words.txt	star every word in a text file (--no-fetch to skip downloads)
dict cache on/off/status/list/clear	manage the offline cache
dict cache remove apple	delete one saved word (--lang en-zhs for a pair copy)
dict	interactive mode

Interactive mode

Run dict with no arguments - you get an ASCII banner and a command table:

dict> :h

Shortcut	Action
<word>	look up
:s <query>	search with candidates
:w	open the wordlist picker
:a	star the last word you looked up
:vk / :vs [word]	play UK / US pronunciation
:rm [word]	unstar
:quiz [count]	start an MCQ quiz
:lang [pair]	show or set language pair
:cache on/off/status	toggle caching mid-session
:h	show the command table
:q, Ctrl+C	quit

Offline cache

Caching is opt-in and off by default - nothing is written to disk until you ask for it:

dict cache on        start saving every lookup (~1 KB per word)
dict cache off       stop saving; saved words are kept
dict cache status    where data lives and how much space it uses
dict cache clear     delete all saved words

While caching is on you can still look up saved words with no internet - they render with an [offline - showing saved copy] badge. Starred words (dict add) are always cached, even with the global cache off.

Data lives in your platform data folder, e.g. %LOCALAPPDATA%\dictcli\ on Windows, ~/.local/share/dictcli/ on Linux.

Wordlist files

Export/import format is deliberately boring - one word per line, # comments allowed:

# exam prep
serendipity
give up
run away

That makes lists easy to edit, sync, and share.

Development

git clone https://github.com/HarvyLiu/dictionaryCLI.git
cd dictionaryCLI
py -m venv .venv && .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Tests use recorded HTML fixtures - no network needed.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial client that parses public web pages for personal use. All dictionary content is © Cambridge University Press & Assessment - please be reasonable with request volume.

License

MIT