canadian-english-huge(5)

💖 canadian-english-huge — a list of English words 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're talking about canadian-english-huge(5) — yes that's the manual page for a word list, and yes it's lowkey iconic. no cap. 🍁

✨ NAME ✨

canadian-english-huge — it's a list of English words. that's the whole vibe. 🫶

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so like, /usr/share/dict/canadian-english-huge is an ASCII file, and inside it? an alphabetic list of words. one per line. literally just words, stacked, alphabetized, serving main character energy for your spell checker. 💅

🎀 FILES 🎀

ngl, /usr/share/dict/ can hold any number of word lists. it's giving "closet full of dictionaries." 👑

here's the lore:

• /etc/dictionaries-common/words is a symbolic link pointing at the currently-chosen /usr/share/dict/<language> file.
• /usr/share/dict/words is a symbolic link to /etc/dictionaries-common/words, and that is the name other software should use when it wants to refer to the system word list. so if you're writing software, use that path, fr fr.
• want more info, or want to actually change the currently-chosen word list? go see select-default-wordlist(8). it's the plug. ✨

and also, /usr/share/dict can contain word lists for many languages, with the name of the language written in English. for example, /usr/share/dict/french and /usr/share/dict/danish contain, respectively, lists of French and Danish words — if they exist. 🙈

heads up bestie: such lists should be coded using the ISO 8859-1 character set encoding. that's not optional vibes, that's the spec. 💖

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• ispell(1)
• select-default-wordlist(8)
• and the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. 🌈

⭐ HISTORY ⭐

the words lists are not specific, and may be generated from any number of sources. so like, they're collages. mood boards of vocabulary. 🎨

plot twist: the system word list used to be /usr/dict/words. for compatibility, software should check that location if /usr/share/dict/words does not exist. the more you know 💫

👑 AUTHOR 👑

word lists are collected and maintained by various authors — it's a whole community effort, slay. the Debian English word lists are built from the SCOWL (Spell-Checker Oriented Word Lists) package, whose upstream editor is Kevin Atkinson <kevina@users.sourceforge.net>. give them their flowers. 🌸

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's from the Debian fam, dated 16 June 2003, and it's filed under canadian-english-huge(5) — periodt. 💖✨🎀