Word Lookup

Look up any word in a sidebar dictionary: definitions, phonetics with audio, examples, and synonyms and antonyms you can click to look up in turn. Replace a word with a synonym from the right-click menu, or make a note for it.

Word Lookup is a successor to Dictionary, which has not been updated since 2022.

What it does

• Look up the selected word (or the word at the cursor, or the text selected in Reading view) opens the Dictionary in the right sidebar. The right-click menu has the same entry: Look up "word".
• The entry shows the word, its pronunciation (with a play button when a recording exists), the definitions under each part of speech with their examples, and synonyms and antonyms as buttons. Click one to look it up. A search box, a language picker, and back and forward buttons sit on top; the commands Go back to the previous word and Go forward to the next word do the same from the keyboard.
• Replace the word with a synonym (right-click menu or command) lists the synonyms in a picker you can filter by typing. The replacement keeps the capital letter or capitals of the original (Happy becomes Joyful) and is one edit, so one undo takes it back. If you change the note while the list is open, nothing is replaced.
• Create a note from the entry, with the built-in layout or your own template. If a note for the word already exists, it is opened, not overwritten.
• Languages. English uses the Free Dictionary API, with Wiktionary as a fallback when it has no entry or is down. Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and about twenty other languages come from Wiktionary, with definitions in English. Pick the language in the sidebar or in the settings. When a word has no entry in the chosen language but Wiktionary has it in others, the message says which.
• Remembers lookups for the session, so going back, or looking up the same word again, makes no request.

Default note

Without a template, a note looks like this:

# serene

*/sɪˈɹiːn/*

**adjective**

1. Calm, peaceful and untroubled; tranquil.
    - *a serene smile*

**Synonyms:** calm, placid, tranquil

**Antonyms:** agitated

Source: [Free Dictionary API](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/serene)

Templates

Set a Template file in the settings and write it with variables in double braces, matched without regard to case. Names it does not know are left as written.

Settings

Language of the word, whether to find extra synonyms and antonyms, new note folder, template file, and whether to open the new note. They appear in Obsidian's settings search.

Network use

Word Lookup talks to the network only when you look up a word, and only to these hosts, through Obsidian's own requestUrl:

• api.dictionaryapi.dev: English entries, and the recordings (api.dictionaryapi.dev/media/..., loaded when you press play).
• en.wiktionary.org: other languages, and English when the first service has no entry or is unavailable.
• api.datamuse.com: extra synonyms and antonyms for English entries whose source lists few. Turn it off in the settings ("Find extra synonyms and antonyms") to send only the word you look up to the dictionary services.

The word you look up is sent to those services, and nothing else: no note text, no account, no telemetry. The services are free and can be slow, rate-limited (Wiktionary asks clients to slow down) or down; the sidebar says so, and a failed lookup is not remembered.

Not included

No offline dictionary, no definitions in languages other than English, no hover popups, and no lookup of whole sentences (selections of more than four words are ignored).

Installation

In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins → Browse and search for "Word Lookup".

More plugins by Siulved54

All of them are in the community directory: Settings -> Community plugins -> Browse, then search for the name.