look up a word in Dictionary.app in Terminal

Solution 1:

You can use...

open dict://my_word

...which will open the Dictionary application and lookup the string my_word. If you want to use multiple words use something like open dict://"Big Bang Theory".

There's no output in the Terminal though.

Solution 2:

Using the Python Objective-C bindings, you could create just a small python script to get it from the built in OS X Dictionary. Here's a post that details this script"

#!/usr/bin/python3

import sys
from CoreServices import DictionaryServices


def main():
    try:
        searchword = sys.argv[1]
    except IndexError:
        errmsg = 'You did not enter any terms to look up in the Dictionary.'
        print(errmsg)
        sys.exit()
    wordrange = (0, len(searchword))
    dictresult = DictionaryServices.DCSCopyTextDefinition(None, searchword, wordrange)
    if not dictresult:
        errmsg = "'%s' not found in Dictionary." % (searchword)
        print(errmsg)
    else:
        print(dictresult)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Save that to dict.py, and then just run python dict.py dictation

Check out the post for more instructions on making it accessable all across your terminal.

Solution 3:

I found a solution using Swift 4.

#!/usr/bin/swift
import Foundation

if (CommandLine.argc < 2) {
    print("Usage: dictionary word")
}else{
    let argument = CommandLine.arguments[1]
    let result = DCSCopyTextDefinition(nil, argument as CFString, CFRangeMake(0, argument.count))?.takeRetainedValue() as String?
    print(result ?? "")
}

1. save this as dict.swift
2. add permission by chmod +x dict.swift
3. lookup dictionary
   • run with interpreter ./dict.swift word
   • build by compiler swiftc dict.swift and run ./dict word