I need a dictionary text file with meanings

Question

I need a text file in the form:

aardvark : animal atlas : collection of maps . . . . . and so on.

I want to use this text file to create my own dictionary like Artha or Wordweb.It will be Python based with Tkinter for GUI.

Where can I obtain such a file.

Answer 1

Natural Language Toolkit.

Yes, this is a large complex library because the task is actually complex. aardvark: animal is easy; given hit: what do you put after it? Do you mean the noun, the verb, or the adjective? Which sense of the noun? Did the baseball player make a hit? Did the pop star have a hit? Did the hit baseball player hit the hit with his bat?

added:

#!/bin/sh
# tersify - returns the most terse definition for its input
#
# examples: echo "aardvark" | tersify
#           tersify < /usr/share/dict/words > ~/my_dict

while  read word  ; do
   echo "$word: $word"
done

'tis a joke, take thee not offense

Answer 2

Project Gutenberg has a few variants (including the unabridged Webster's). Not exactly the format you're looking for, but you should be able to parse it to remove parts of speech, etc.