canadian-english(5)

💖 canadian-english(5) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the manual page for canadian-english — the section 5 (that's file formats, iykyk) glow-up of your fave thing: a list of English words. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🇨🇦✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

canadian-english — a list of English words 🫶

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

/usr/share/dict/canadian-english is an ASCII file bestie, and inside it is an alphabetic list of words — literally one per line, no notes, no drama, just words. it's giving "quiet luxury". 💅

🎀 FILES 🎀

so there can be any number of word lists chillin' in /usr/share/dict/. like, the whole friend group.

/etc/dictionaries-common/words is a symbolic link to the currently-chosen /usr/share/dict/<language> file. (yes, <language> is a placeholder, don't come for me 😭)

/usr/share/dict/words is a symbolic link to /etc/dictionaries-common/words, and that is the name other software should refer to when it wants the system word list. it's the main character of paths, fr fr. 👑

if you wanna know more, or you wanna change the currently-chosen word list, go see select-default-wordlist(8). periodt.

also! the directory /usr/share/dict can hold word lists for many languages, and the name of the language is in English, e.g. /usr/share/dict/french and /usr/share/dict/danish contain respectively lists of French and Danish words — if they exist, so don't @ me if they don't. 🙈

those lists should be coded using the ISO 8859-1 character set encoding. no cap.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

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

🦋 HISTORY 🦋

the word lists are not specific, and may be generated from any number of sources. mysterious. iconic. we don't ask questions. 💀

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. old-money path, we respect the heritage. ✨

👑 AUTHOR 👑

word lists are collected and maintained by various authors — it's a collab, bestie.

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>. absolute legend behavior. 🫶

reminder bestie: this page is Debian, dated 16 June 2003, and lives at canadian-english(5). she's vintage, she's timeless, she slays. 💖✨🎀