Wiktionary Sidebar

approved

by Jonas Karneboge

Right-click any selected word to look it up in Wiktionary. Works in editor and reading view. Shows definitions, etymology, synonyms and more for German, English, French, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, and Spanish — each from its native Wiktionary edition. - This plugin has not been manually reviewed by Obsidian staff.

★ 1 stars↓ 255 downloadsUpdated 2mo agoMIT
Install in ObsidianView on GitHub

Wiktionary Sidebar

An Obsidian plugin that lets you look up any word in Wiktionary without leaving your vault.

Right-click any selected word → "Wiktionary: „word"" → definitions appear in a sidebar.

Features

  • Works in both editor view and reading view
  • Supports 7 languages: German, English, French, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish
  • Each language can be toggled individually in settings
  • Direct links to the source Wiktionary page for each language
  • Shows structured entries: part of speech, definitions, etymology, synonyms, and more
  • Respects Obsidian's light and dark themes via CSS variables
  • Desktop only

Installation

From the Community Plugin Browser (recommended)

  1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community Plugins → Browse
  2. Search for Wiktionary Sidebar
  3. Install and enable

Manual installation

  1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
  2. Copy them to .obsidian/plugins/wiktionary-sidebar/ in your vault
  3. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

Usage

  1. Select a word in any note (editor or reading view)
  2. Right-click → Wiktionary: „word"
  3. The sidebar opens with entries for all enabled languages

The sidebar updates every time you look up a new word and stays open until you close it.

Settings

Open Settings → Wiktionary Sidebar to toggle languages on or off:

LanguageSourceOn by default
Deutschde.wiktionary.org✓
Englishen.wiktionary.org✓
Françaisfr.wiktionary.org
Italianoit.wiktionary.org
Svenskasv.wiktionary.org
Nederlandsnl.wiktionary.org
Españoles.wiktionary.org

How it works

Each language is fetched from its own native Wiktionary edition via the MediaWiki action=parse API — German from de.wiktionary.org, English from en.wiktionary.org, and so on. This means words with special characters (e.g. „autonomía") are found correctly on their native edition. The HTML response is parsed locally — no data leaves your machine beyond the Wiktionary API request itself.

Compatibility

  • Obsidian 0.15.0 or later
  • Desktop only (Windows, macOS, Linux)

License

MIT

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