[![Dictionary word completion inside Emacs](https://blog.mads-hartmann.com/images/responsive/dictionary-completion-640.webp)](https://blog.mads-hartmann.com/images/dictionary-completion.png)

# Complete Words Based on the Active Dictionary in Emacs
 by [Mads Hartmann](https://blog.mads-hartmann.com/index.md) - 03 Mar 2014 

I have an ever-growing document where I keep track of all the small (and sometimes major) changes I want to make to Emacs. Today I picked a random item and had a go at it.

I’m a lousy speller and often misspell words in my comments and git commit messages. I do have [fly-spell](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FlySpell) enabled to catch my mistakes but I would prefer not to make them in the first place. For functions, variable names etc. I have [dabbrev-expand](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DynamicAbbreviations) and my own home-grown solution based on [ctags](http://ctags.sourceforge.net/) but nothing similar for words in the English dictionary, so I spent 15 minutes implementing a simple solution.

The picture above shows the command in action trying to complete the word `"dino"`. I invoked `ido-complete-word-ispell` and typed in `"sa"`; the list shows the three remaining completions. I use [ido-vertical-mode](https://github.com/gempesaw/ido-vertical-mode.el) to get the vertical representation of the completions.

The code for command is shown below. It depends on [ido-mode](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings).

```
(defun ido-complete-word-ispell ()
  "Completes the symbol at point based on entries in the
dictionary"
  (interactive)
  (let* ((word (thing-at-point 'symbol t))
         (boundaries (bounds-of-thing-at-point 'symbol))
         (start (car boundaries))
         (end (cdr boundaries))
         (words (ispell-lookup-words word)))
    (let ((selection (ido-completing-read "Words: " words)))
      (if selection
          (progn
            (delete-region start end)
            (insert selection))))))
```

To add a key-binding for any of the following:

```
;; To enable it in a specific mode
(define-key markdown-mode-map "\M-?" 'ido-complete-word-ispell)
;; To enable it in all modes
(global-set-key (kbd "M-?") 'ido-complete-word-ispell)
```

Simple as that. Now I just need to figure out how to bind the command to a specific key whenever the cursor is inside of a comment or a doc-string.


---

Canonical page: https://blog.mads-hartmann.com/emacs/2014/03/03/complete-word-based-on-dictionary.html