Lookup the dictionary with wildcards

Question

Since wildcards aren't recognized by the GUI, is there another way?

Answer 1

From the command line you can use look which looks for the string as a prefix of a word in the file- /usr/share/dict/words.

look ent

Right click the word in the Terminal window and select Look Up "....." menu or you can grep /usr/share/dict/words using regular expressions or extended regular expressions. Such as:

grep 'hello$' /usr/share/dict/words

Answer 2

I never liked that the Dictionary.app in macOS does not support wildcards and while I mentioned in my comment to the OP to use and online dictionary that supports wildcards, I also searched Google for a third-party app that could be installed and didn't find any.

While one can easily bookmark the https://www.onelook.com URL, nonetheless, I decided to appify it, using AppleScript, saving it as Wildcard Dictionary Search.app, so I could access it from the Dock or Spotlight, etc.

Copy and paste the AppleScript code below into a new blank Script Editor document and save it as an application.

on run
    try
        tell current application
            activate
            set theSearchString to text returned of ¬
                (display dialog ¬
                    "Wildcard Dictionary Search:" default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} ¬
                    default button 2 with title "https://www.onelook.com/?w=")
        end tell
        tell application "Safari"
            tell front window
                if theSearchString is not equal to "" then
                    set current tab to (make new tab with properties ¬
                        {URL:"https://www.onelook.com/?w=" & theSearchString})
                else
                    set current tab to (make new tab with properties ¬
                        {URL:"https://www.onelook.com"})
                end if
            end tell
        end tell
    on error eStr number eNum
        if eNum is not equal to -128 then
            display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} ¬
                default button 1 with icon caution
            return
        end if
    end try
end run

---

Note that you can give it a custom icon and there are instructions on the Internet how to do that. I took the Dictionary.icns file from within the Dictionary.app, which is red, and using Preview to exported the 1024x1024 image as a PNG. I changed it to blue in GIMP by adjusting the Hue-Saturation on the red color. Then using instructions in Create Your Own Custom Icons in OS X 10.7.5 or Later I created a blue Dictionary.icns file, which I used to replace the applet.icns file within the AppleScript app, renaming it applet.icns.

Answer 3

Some time ago I created a handy little app doing exactly that: wrdlr

Answer 4

Use egrep command in Terminal. It recognizes wildcards:

egrep "^..arl$" /usr/share/dict/words

The caret ^ tells egrep command to search for the string at the beginning of a line, and the dot . matches any character except a new line.

So, here are the results of a search:

gnarl
pearl
quarl
snarl
wharl

By using a question mark ? you can even find words that may or may not have a characters:

egrep "^int..?$" /usr/share/dict/words

Result (here's into included):

inter
intil
into
intue

Also you can use this bash alias:

findword () { /usr/bin/grep ^"$@"$ /usr/share/dict/words ; }

findword '.ello'

Result:

cello
hello

Or you can search using * for all words ending in mill (including the word mill itself):

egrep '^.*mill$' /usr/share/dict/words

crabmill
crazingmill
graymill
gristmill
mill
overmill
pugmill
remill
sawmill
semimill
treadmill
walkmill
windmill