Lexophile - Personal Dictionary

An Obsidian plugin for building a personal dictionary. Import any word you read to your vault as a note with the definition, example sentence, and a link back to where you found it.

Features

• Add words from the command palette
• Paste a whole list of words and import them in one go
• Import every word you saved on a Kobo eReader, linked back to the book it came from
• Right-click any word on the web to save it, using the companion Chrome extension
• Auto-generated table view of your full lexicon
• Familiarity score on every word (common / familiar / obscure)
• Optional offline mode using a bundled English dictionary
• Custom note templates for each entity type (words and books each get their own)

How it works

When you save a word, Lexophile looks it up, creates a note in your Dictionary/ folder, and adds it to a table view. The lookup goes to the free Dictionary API by default, or to a local SQLite file you download once if you switch to offline mode.

That's it. Everything stays in your vault as Markdown.

Install

Download from the community.

To install manually:

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Drop them in the .obsidian/plugins/lexophile/ folder inside your vault (create it if it doesn't exist)
3. Enable Lexophile - Personal Dictionary in Obsidian's community plugins settings

Use

Add a word: open the command palette and run Lexophile: Add word to lexicon. Type or paste a word and hit Enter.

Mass-import: run Lexophile: Mass-import words from a list. Paste a list separated by commas, spaces, or new lines.

Kobo import: in settings, enable Kobo import. Plug in your Kobo, run Lexophile: Import words from Kobo, and pick the words you want to save.

Web capture: install the Chrome extension. Highlight a word on any page, right-click, and choose the Add to Lexophile menu item.

Offline mode

In settings, switch Dictionary source to Local (offline) and click Download. The plugin fetches a ~23MB dictionary file (about 167K English entries from Wiktionary) and stores it in the plugin folder. After that, lookups are local and instant.

Data comes from MattDodsonEnglish/english-dictionary.

Privacy

No analytics, no telemetry, no account. In online mode the plugin calls api.dictionaryapi.dev. In offline mode the only network call is the one-time dictionary download.

Support

• Open an issue for bugs or feature requests
• Buy me a coffee if you find it useful

License

MIT