Multilingual Dictionary

unlisted

by mambuco

Offline dictionary lookups with synonym popover and sidebar views for 10 languages. Download only the dictionaries you need.

Updated 16d agoMIT
View on GitHub

Obsidian Multilingual Dictionary

Offline dictionary lookups inside Obsidian. Download only the languages you need and look up words without ever leaving your notes.

Features

  • 10 languages — English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Chinese
  • Fully offline — dictionaries are downloaded once and stored locally
  • Synonym popover — double-click a word to see definitions, synonyms, and related words
  • Sidebar view — dedicated dictionary panel with search and prefix autocomplete
  • Right-click lookup — context menu option to look up any word
  • Stemmer support — finds base forms of conjugated/inflected words (powered by Snowball)
  • Auto language detection — detects the language of selected text across loaded dictionaries
  • Multiple sources per language — merges dictionaries for better coverage (e.g. Italian uses both OMW and ItalWordNet)

Installation

From source

git clone https://github.com/mambucodev/obsidian-multilingual-dictionary.git
cd obsidian-multilingual-dictionary
npm install
npm run build

Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into your vault's .obsidian/plugins/multilingual-dictionary/ folder.

Manual install

Download the latest release and extract it into .obsidian/plugins/multilingual-dictionary/.

Usage

  1. Open Settings > Multilingual Dictionary
  2. Click Download next to the languages you want
  3. Look up words by:
    • Double-clicking a word to open the popover
    • Right-clicking a word and selecting "Look up in dictionary"
    • Opening the Dictionary sidebar from the ribbon icon and typing a search

Dictionary sources

LanguageSource
EnglishOpen English WordNet 2025
ItalianOMW Italian + ItalWordNet
SpanishOMW Spanish
FrenchWOLF French
GermanOMW German
PortugueseOpenWN-PT
DutchOpen Dutch WordNet
PolishplWordNet
JapaneseJapanese WordNet
ChineseChinese WordNet

All dictionaries use the WN-LMF format and are parsed directly within the plugin.

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # watch mode
npm run build   # production build

Tests:

node test/test-lookup.mjs
node test/test-compression.mjs
node test/test-wn-lmf-parser.mjs

License

MIT

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