Moedict

教育部重編國語辭典修訂本:

• moedict.tw — community mirror with clean JSON API; fast, no JS needed
• dict.revised.moe.edu.tw — official first-hand source; JS-rendered, requires Playwright

國家教育研究院樂詞網 (NAER):

• terms.naer.edu.tw — bilingual academic terminology database; JS-rendered, requires Playwright

When citing in reports, reference official URLs (printed by default) as primary sources.

Output

Default (moedict API) output includes:

• Character/word with radical and stroke count
• All heteronyms (異讀) with 注音 and 拼音
• Numbered definitions with part-of-speech tags, examples, and literary quotes
• Official MoE dictionary search URL

With --official: additionally fetches the full entry from the official site, along with related compound words and their direct URLs.

With --naer: tabular results showing English term, Chinese translation, and academic field.

Playwright Setup

The --official and --naer flags require Playwright with Chromium. On first use, the script auto-installs browsers. To install manually:

uv run python3 -c "
# /// script
# dependencies = ['playwright']
# ///
import subprocess, sys
subprocess.run([sys.executable, '-m', 'playwright', 'install', '--with-deps', 'chromium'], check=True)
"

Limitations

• Moedict API only has single-character and common compound entries; not all compounds are indexed
• Official site lookup is slower (~3-5s per query due to headless browser)
• NAER lookup is slower (~5-8s due to JS rendering and form submission)
• NAER returns first page of results only (up to ~20 entries)