Emacs Config Gems - Part 5

Being a text editor (among other things), Emacs has quite a few tricks up its sleeve for making writing not just easier but also fun and seemingly magical. I call this section in my config “Wordcraft.” Emacs Dictionary When we need a dictionary, Emacs got us covered and then some. After version 28, Emacs connects to a dictionary as a two-step process by default: It tries to connect to a local host. If it fails, it next connects to an online dictionary at www.dict.org, This workflow remains in place as long as dictionary-server is nil, which is the default. It’s a bit confusing (to me anyway), since “nil” might indicate that no dictionary is set up, but here it means we simply didn’t introduce any configuration to it. The online version at dict.org contains the Webster dictionary from 19131, which (if you follow the footnote) will start sounding like an excellent resource. What I didn’t know up until now however is that dict.org contains more than just this wonderful dictionary. When…