query word definitions from Oxford Dictionaries API

a small shell script for quickly looking up a words meaning, synonyms or antonyms from within the terminal.

Oxford Dictionaries API version 1 will be deprecated on June 30, 2019 in favor of version 2. As a consequence you will have to update the script to version 2.0 as well as your accounts from Free to Prototype (unpaid) or Developer (paid) to continue using describe. Unfortunately, unpaid accounts won't be authorized to query for synonyms and antonyms anymore. You will still be able to fetch the definitions, though.

In order to make the script work you first have to register a (free) developer Prototype account at Oxford Dictionaries to obtain an app id and app key. In order to make --synonyms and --antonyms work you will have to update to the paid Developer plan.

Create a configuration file called ~/.config/describe and place your app id and app key in it like so:

app_id=<YOUR_APP_ID>
app_key=<YOUR_APP_KEY>

substituting <YOUR_APP_ID> with your real app id and <YOUR_APP_KEY> with your real app key.

Optionally, create a symlink to the script in a location contained in your path like /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin to make it conveniently executable from everywhere, e.g.

if you placed the script in /opt/scripts before:

sudo ln -s /opt/scripts/describe.sh /usr/local/bin/describe

To query for a words definition simply pass it as an argument to the script

$ describe tiny

tiny [ˈtʌɪni] is very small

Alternatively, you can try deriving the words meaning by its synonyms

$ describe --synonyms tiny

minute
small-scale
scaled-down
mini
baby
toy
pocket
fun-size
petite
dwarfish
knee-high
miniature
minuscule
microscopic
nanoscopic
infinitesimal
micro
diminutive
pocket-sized
reduced
Lilliputian

or its antonyms

$ describe --antonyms tiny

huge
significant

You can also obtain definitions for more than one word at once

$ describe tiny kitten

tiny [ˈtʌɪni] is very small
kitten [ˈkɪt(ə)n] is a young cat

curl jq sed