--- name: "british-english" section: "5" platform: "linux" package: "wbritish" version: "2020.12.07-4" release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/british-english" --- # british-english(5) a list of English words ## NAME british-english - a list of English words ## DESCRIPTION **/usr/share/dict/british-english** is an ASCII file which contains an alphabetic list of words, one per line. ## FILES There may be any number of word lists in /usr/share/dict/. */etc/dictionaries-common/words* is a symbolic link to the currently-chosen */usr/share/dict/\* file. */usr/share/dict/words* is a symbolic link to */etc/dictionaries-common/words*, and is the name by which other software should refer to the system word list. See [**select-default-wordlist**(8)](/select-default-wordlist/8.md) for more information, and/or to change the currently-chosen word list. The directory */usr/share/dict* can contain word lists for many languages, with name of the language in English, e.g., */usr/share/dict/french* and */usr/share/dict/danish* contain respectively lists of French and Danish words if they exist. Such lists should be coded using the ISO 8859-1 character set encoding. ## SEE ALSO [**ispell**(1)](/ispell/1.md), [**select-default-wordlist**(8)](/select-default-wordlist/8.md), and the *Filesystem Hierarchy* *Standard*. ## HISTORY The words lists are not specific, and may be generated from any number of sources. The system word list used to be */usr/dict/words*. For compatibility, software should check that location if */usr/share/dict/words* does not exist. ## AUTHOR Word lists are collected and maintained by various authors. The Debian English word lists are built from the SCOWL (Spell- Checker Oriented Word Lists) package, whose upstream editor is Kevin Atkinson \.