Is there an offline command-line dictionary?

sdcv is the console version of Stardict.

1. Install the dictionary

Run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install sdcv

2. Download dictionary files

Download the dictionary files according to your requirements from the following sources.

• List of dictd-www.dict.org Dictionaries (archived):
  • The Collaborative International Dictionary of English (GPL, 35MB, 174222 words) (download tarball from archive.org)
• https://web.archive.org/web/20140428004049/http://abloz.com/huzheng/stardict-dic/misc/
• Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing
• Jargon File - A comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor
• GNU Linux English-English Dictionary

3. Install downloaded dictionaries

Make the directory where sdcv looks for the dictionary:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/stardict/dic/

The next command depends on whether the downloaded file is a .gz file or a .bz2 file.

If it is a .bz2 file:

sudo tar -xvjf downloaded.tar.bz2 -C /usr/share/stardict/dic

If it is a .gz file:

sudo tar -xvzf downlaoded.tar.gz -C /usr/share/stardict/dic

4. Done!

To search for a word use:

sdcv word

Easy offline dictd installation

Rationale

The dict command can easily be used with offline dictionaries. It suffices to install the dictd daemon with its dependencies alongside a local, offline dictionary. This turns out to be a much easier procedure than installing sdcv as suggested elsewhere on this page.

Installation

Below is shown how to install dictd along with the dict-gcide comprehensive English dictionary. There are many more dictionairies available from the standard repositories.

$ sudo apt-get install dict dictd dict-gcide

Usage

$ dict word

 3 definitions found

    From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

      Word \Word\, n. [AS. word; akin to OFries. & OS. word, D. woord,
         G. wort, Icel. or[eth], Sw. & Dan. ord, Goth. wa['u]rd,
         OPruss. wirds, Lith. vardas a name, L. verbum a word; or
         perhaps to Gr. "rh`twr an orator. Cf. {Verb}.]
         [1913 Webster]
         1. The spoken sign of a conception or an idea; an articulate
            or vocal sound, or a combination of articulate and vocal
            sounds, uttered by the human voice, and by custom
            expressing an idea or ideas; a single component part of
            human speech or language; a constituent part of a
            sentence; a term; a vocable. "A glutton of words." --Piers
            Plowman.
            [1913 Webster]

                  You cram these words into mine ears, against
                  The stomach of my sense.              --Shak.
            [1913 Webster]

                  Amongst men who confound their ideas with words,
                  there must be endless disputes.       --Locke.
            [1913 Webster]

         2. Hence, the written or printed character, or combination of
            characters, expressing such a term; as, the words on a
            page.
            [1913 Webster]

         3. pl. Talk; discourse; speech; language.
            [1913 Webster]

You probably also have aspell installed, which has the advantage of giving suggestions for misspelled words. You can call aspell directly on your text file with:

aspell check text.txt

or use it on a single word:

echo wrd | aspell -a