Shabd

A command-line English dictionary tool for quick word lookups.

Features

• Lookup English word meanings directly from your terminal
• Works offline, with automatic background updates to its dictionary data
• Understands inflected forms automatically (e.g. hike, hiking, hiked all resolve to the same entry, irregular forms included)
• Simple and straightforward command-line interface

Installation

You can install Shabd from PyPI:

pip install shabd

Or install directly from the repository:

git clone https://github.com/spignelon/shabd.git
cd shabd
pip install .

Usage

Basic usage:

# Look up a single word
shabd apple

# Look up a phrase
shabd "machine learning"

Options:

# Display help
shabd --help

# Display version
shabd --version

How It Works

Shabd uses the Open English WordNet (OEWN) via the wn library as its dictionary source. On first use it downloads the data (~11MB download, ~100MB once indexed locally) into ~/.wn_data, then every lookup is served from there fully offline. It checks for a newer OEWN edition at most once every 30 days, never on every lookup.

Note: Shabd originally scraped Cambridge Dictionary, which worked for ~4 years, until Cambridge added Cloudflare bot-protection that blocks automated requests - so Shabd moved to this offline WordNet-based dictionary instead.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

This project is the continuation of the cambridge-dictionary project.