A Quick Introduction

The Open Dictionary Project (abbreviated ODict for short) is an open-source file format for extremely fast, offline retrieval of lexical data such as etymologies, senses, and word definitions. Similar projects in the space include StarDict, DICT and XDXF.

ODict attempts to improve upon these existing solutions by offering a format that is:

• ⚡ Fast. Entry lookups take less than 1s and don’t require indexing.
• 🧠 Easy. ODict files are written using dead-simple XML and compiled to binary.
• 🤏 Tiny. A single dictionary can store thousands of entries and stay under 1MB.
• 📦 Portable. ODict is a single executable written in Go that can run almost anywhere.

The ODict Project features a command-line compiler and processor as well as Go, Java, Python and JavaScript SDKs for interfacing with compiled dictionary files.