cli-dictionary

Look up a word’s meaning directly from a terminal with cli-dictionary, returning dictionary information without leaving the command line. As an Education-category program, it provides a lightweight, fast way to check vocabulary during study, writing, or language practice.

It supports English, Portuguese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, and Turkish lookups. Run cli-dictionary <word> <lang> for a search, or set a default with cli-dictionary --lang-default <lang> so later queries can use cli-dictionary <word> alone. Add -s or --synonyms to retrieve related words, and -e or --examples to request usage examples.

The command can also create Anki cards using --card with the basic, basic-reverse, or cloze type. Decks and subdecks are created automatically, while named profiles containing spaces must be enclosed in quotation marks, such as --profile "User name"; Anki must be open while cards are being created. This makes the program useful to learners who want dictionary lookups and spaced-repetition material in the same terminal workflow.

The latest version runs on Linux with snapd and targets x86_64 (amd64) systems. cli-dictionary is released as open-source software, and it will not receive further updates through this channel; installation should follow the project’s instructions on GitHub.