If you are not connected to the Internet, you may want to have local dictionaries or a thesaurus. I installed the following
After install you need to
sudoedit -u root /etc/default/dictdUncomment --locale=en_US.utf-8, i.e. remove the leading # on that line.
Then go into Applications/ Office/ Dictionary and enter Edit/ Preferences/. Add a new server called "Local Host" with hostname 127.0.0.1.
In emacs, use [Ctrl]-[d] [d] [d] to look up words. If you have trouble, try first restarting your machine to ensure the daemon is there. Then check that your ~/.emacs file contains something like:
(require 'dictem) (setq dictem-server "localhost") (dictem-initialize) ; Ask for word, database and search strategy and show definitions found (global-set-key "\C-cds" 'dictem-run-search) ; Ask for word, database and search strategy and show matches found (global-set-key "\C-cdm" 'dictem-run-match) ; Ask for word and database name and show definitions found (global-set-key "\C-cdd" 'dictem-run-define) ; Show information about DICT server (global-set-key "\C-cd\M-r" 'dictem-run-show-server) ; Show information about the database (global-set-key "\C-cd\M-i" 'dictem-run-show-info) ; Show a list of databases provided by DICT server (global-set-key "\C-cd\M-b" 'dictem-run-show-databases) (setq dictem-user-databases-alist '(("_en-en" . ("bouvier" "gcide" "wn")) ("_unidoc" . ("man" "info" "howto" "rfc" "susv3")) ))I did not have trouble with the Ubuntu install, anyway.