Cambridge dictionary cli app
- Autosuggest related words on typo.
- Interactive suggestion menu to select words from in the above case.
- Handles past and past-particle words. Returns the original word definition.
- No API/database involved.
- A Persistent caching mechanism. This avoids looking up already searched words; hence fast results.
Uses python's integrated
sqlite3
for maintaning a persistent cache.
pip install cambd
Usage: cambd [OPTIONS] WORD
Options:
-a, --show-all Show all the definitions of a word.
-d, --dictionary TEXT Determine which dictionary region to use (uk, us) [default: uk]
-v, --verbose Show extra word info ie, word codes & labels. [ex: A2 informal]
-c, --clear-cache Clear all the stored cache from system.
--version Show the version and exit.
--help Show this message and exit.
By default it caches words in
$HOME/.cambd-cache.db
. To clear the cache if needed
runcambd --clear-cache
. It is strongly recommended to not modify this file manually.
- Why scrape instead of using a Dictionary API?
TBH, As a non native english speaker, I find the cambridge dictionary the most easy to understand. But they don't have any public free API with all the features I want like getting suggestions on misspelled words and give both US and UK definations etc. So I ended up building this cli tool with basic scrapping for my own usecase as I am a terminal power user and don't want to leave the terminal, go to browser, open a new tab just to search for a word meaning.
MIT License © Rocktim Saikia 2024