Definitions and spelling
Pellet can define a word and check your spelling without going near the network. Both work from files on your machine, and both are off until you choose a language.
Look a word up
Section titled “Look a word up”Put the caret on a word, or select one, and press ⌃⌘D (CtrlAltD on Windows and Linux). You can also right-click and choose Look up, or tap Define in a PDF or ebook’s selection bar.
The card shows the word’s meanings grouped by part of speech, its pronunciation, any definition you wrote, and every note in your vault named like the word — with a New note if there isn’t one yet.
A plural finds its singular. Look up “controls” and the card is headed “control”, with your own definition of “control” and the “control” note beside the “controls” one.
Hearing it
Section titled “Hearing it”The speaker button next to the pronunciation reads the word aloud, in the word’s own language — French words in a French voice. It uses the voices already installed on your computer, so nothing is sent anywhere. If your system has no voice for that language the button isn’t shown.
Pellet picks the best voice your system has. On macOS the genuinely natural ones are a separate download: System Settings ▸ Accessibility ▸ Spoken Content ▸ System Voice ▸ Manage Voices. Install any and Pellet will prefer them automatically — there’s no setting to change.
Language packs
Section titled “Language packs”Definitions come from language packs you download in Settings ▸ Dictionary. Each pack is a compressed Wiktionary extract, read a few kilobytes at a time, so a 40 MB pack costs nothing until you ask it something.
A pack has two languages, and they’re independent: the words it answers for, and the language those definitions are written in. That’s why the list has more than one “French”:
| Row | Answers for | Defined in |
|---|---|---|
| French · Definitions in English | French words | English |
| French · Definitions in French | French words | French |
| English · Definitions in French | English words | French |
Every row states its definition language, so you always know whether maison
will come back as “house” or as “Bâtiment servant de logis”.
Definitions in picks which you’d rather have. It narrows the list to packs that define in that language, and when more than one pack can answer a word it puts the matching one first — the others still appear below it. Choose Any language to see everything.
The search box finds a language by either of its names or codes: type “french” or “fr” and you get all three rows above.
A pack is downloaded once for the whole computer, but each vault chooses which ones it consults. If a word finds nothing while a pack sits switched off, the card says so and links you to Settings.
What to expect from each pack
Section titled “What to expect from each pack”Some honest limits, because they vary a lot by language:
- Packs that define English in another language come from that language’s own Wiktionary, which defines foreign words briefly — often a single word. They read more like a translation dictionary than like the English pack.
- How well a pack finds a word as you actually wrote it — “ran” rather than “run”, “chevaux” rather than “cheval” — depends on the source. Most languages resolve 70–90% of inflected forms. It’s weakest where Wiktionary doesn’t give inflections their own entries.
- Swedish has only the English-defined pack. There’s no Swedish Wiktionary extract to build the other two from.
Spelling
Section titled “Spelling”Settings ▸ Dictionary ▸ Spelling chooses the checker. Pellet is the built-in one: the same on every device, nothing downloaded, nothing leaving your machine. System hands the job to your operating system. Off stops the underlines.
Under Word lists you choose which languages get checked — British or American English, or several at once, in which case a word is accepted if any of them knows it. Empty means Pellet follows your device’s language.
Add a dictionary file… at the top of that list takes any Hunspell
dictionary: pick its .dic and Pellet takes the matching .aff beside it.
Nothing is uploaded and the file stays on that device.
Right-clicking an underlined word offers corrections and Add to spelling. Words you add that way live in the vault and travel with it — they’re listed under Words you added.
Tags are never spellchecked, so #Bücher isn’t underlined for being German.
Grammar
Section titled “Grammar”Settings ▸ Dictionary ▸ Grammar turns on a second kind of underline, in a different colour: agreement, punctuation, word order, repeated words. Like everything else here it runs on your machine and sends nothing anywhere.
It is English only. The checker has rules for no other language, so if no English word list is switched on the card says so rather than quietly doing nothing. And it never underlines spelling — that stays the spellchecker’s job, so a word never carries two squiggles.
Right-click a grammar underline and it explains itself: “Did you mean to repeat this word?” Below that are the fixes, and below those Ignore this rule everywhere, for when a rule is simply wrong about how you write. Undo that under Ignored rules in the same card.
Style suggestions is a separate switch, off by default. It adds opinions — hedging, filler words, long sentences — rather than errors. Worth turning on when you are editing, and worth leaving off when you are drafting.
Definitions of your own
Section titled “Definitions of your own”Add your own definition on the lookup card writes a definition into the
vault rather than into a pack. Those live in .pellet/dictionary.json, sync
with the vault, and always appear first on the card. Where you already have
one, the card offers a pencil to edit it rather than an Add that would
quietly replace it.
Definitions come from Wiktionary via Wiktextract, under CC BY-SA 4.0.