Huh, interesting. I imagine a lot of knowledge bases–personal, corporate, etc.–might be represented in that format.
Re:Etymology of the Word “Lord”
by dredmorbius on Saturday June 12, 2021 @11:44PM
(#27489571)
Quite.
A principle limitation is that there's no security component, so anyone with segmented knowledge will not be having a good time. But pretty much anything else.
Using dict you can specify the target dictionary using the '-d <dictionary>' option. This can of course also be aliased or written into shell functions.
The C/S element comes in handy on systems where the client is available, but dictionaries aren't. So from MacOS I can query my local Linux box.
(Debian has numerous dictionaries, including the US Census Gazeteer files, and others --- any information that can be represented in the dict format and be keyword-queried, basically. Quite handy.)