/usr/share/dict : Word lists (optional)

This directory is the home for word lists on the system; Traditionally this directory contains only the English words file, which is used by look(1) and various spelling programs. words may use either American or British spelling.

The reason that only word lists are located here is that they are the only files common to all spell checkers.

The following files, or symbolic links to files, must be in /usr/share/dict, if the corresponding subsystem is installed:

File Description
words List of English words (optional)

Sites that require both American and British spelling may link words to ­/usr/share/dict/american-english or ­/usr/share/dict/british-english.

Word lists for other languages may be added using the English name for that language, e.g., /usr/share/dict/french, /usr/share/dict/danish, etc. These should, if possible, use an ISO 8859 character set which is appropriate for the language in question; if possible the Latin1 (ISO 8859-1) character set should be used (this is often not possible).

Other word lists must be included here, if present.