Look up English words in Cambridge Dictionary.

Looks up one English word in the Cambridge English Dictionary like its entry page: headword, parts of speech and the numbered senses, each with its definition and first example sentence. A word that is not in the dictionary returns an empty list of senses.

No reports yetRead-only, no login

Site: Cambridge Dictionary, United Kingdom
Version: v1
Runs, last 7 days: No reports yet
sha256: 41dffc96acf5…

Run it with your agent

after installing Wield

Ask in plain words. Your agent finds this recipe and calls it:

“Look up English words in Cambridge Dictionary.”

Read-only: it changes nothing on the site. No login needed.

{
  "tool": "run",
  "arguments": {
    "recipe_id": "dictionary.cambridge.org/lookup-word",
    "params": {
      "query": "serendipity"
    }
  }
}

Requests

sent from your browser, in order

1GET/dictionary/english/{{params.query | lower | urlencode}}Dictionary entry page /dictionary/english/<word>; read-only GET. Headword and parts of speech come from the entry header; each sense is a div.def-block holding the definition (.def) and the first example (.examp). Unknown words redirect to the dictionary index, which has no entry blocks, so the list is empty.

Parameters

from your agent

querystringrequiredOne English word, e.g. 'serendipity', 'resilient', 'ubiquitous'

Returns

to your agent

headwordstring

part_of_speechstringFirst part of speech of the entry, e.g. 'noun', 'adjective'

querystring

sensesobject[]definition, example

Where it can send

dictionary.cambridge.org

Anything else is blocked by the extension.

Reads from your session

Nothing. Your browser attaches the site's cookies by itself.

Used only in requests to the addresses on the left. Never sent to wield.run or your agent.

Checks

a run passes when

length(output.senses) > `0`
length(output.senses[?definition != `null`]) == length(output.senses)

Raw recipe

Served as canonical JSON from /api/v1/recipes/dictionary.cambridge.org/lookup-word, so its sha256 matches the ETag and the index.

Check it yourself

curl -s https://wield.run/api/v1/recipes/dictionary.cambridge.org/lookup-word | shasum -a 256
# 41dffc96acf58fffd8c0dbc985790f803b8a67d817cea099e2442eb9712b1ad1

dictionary.cambridge.org/lookup-word.json, v1

{
  "description": "Looks up one English word in the Cambridge English Dictionary like its entry page: headword, parts of speech and the numbered senses, each with its definition and first example sentence. A word that is not in the dictionary returns an empty list of senses.",
  "effect": "read",
  "id": "dictionary.cambridge.org/lookup-word",
  "keywords": [
    "cambridge",
    "cambridge dictionary",
    "dictionary",
    "english",
    "definition",
    "meaning",
    "word",
    "vocabulary",
    "thesaurus",
    "synonym",
    "grammar",
    "wörterbuch",
    "diccionario",
    "lexicon"
  ],
  "output": {
    "schema": {
      "properties": {
        "headword": {
          "type": [
            "string",
            "null"
          ]
        },
        "part_of_speech": {
          "description": "First part of speech of the entry, e.g. 'noun', 'adjective'",
          "type": [
            "string",
            "null"
          ]
        },
        "query": {
          "type": "string"
        },
        "senses": {
          "items": {
            "properties": {
              "definition": {
                "type": "string"
              },
              "example": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              }
            },
            "required": [
              "definition"
            ],
            "type": "object"
          },
          "type": "array"
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "query",
        "senses"
      ],
      "type": "object"
    },
    "value": "{query: params.query, headword: steps.lookup.headword || `null`, part_of_speech: steps.lookup.part_of_speech || `null`, senses: steps.lookup.senses[?definition != `null`].{definition: definition, example: example || `null`}}"
  },
  "params": {
    "additionalProperties": false,
    "properties": {
      "query": {
        "description": "One English word, e.g. 'serendipity', 'resilient', 'ubiquitous'",
        "maxLength": 100,
        "minLength": 2,
        "type": "string"
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "query"
    ],
    "type": "object"
  },
  "provenance": {
    "method": "har",
    "notes": "GET /dictionary/english/<word>: the server-rendered entry page holds the headword and part of speech in the pos-header block, and each sense in a def-block with its definition and example. A word search that does not match a headword redirects to the dictionary index, which has no entries. Pages are large (about 260 KB), but only one page is requested per call.",
    "recorded_at": "2026-11-08T17:20:00.000Z",
    "recorded_by": "wield-forge (claude-haiku agent)"
  },
  "requires_login": false,
  "schema": "https://wield.run/schema/recipe/v1.json",
  "site": {
    "country": "GB",
    "id": "dictionary.cambridge.org",
    "language": "en",
    "name": "Cambridge Dictionary",
    "origin": "https://dictionary.cambridge.org",
    "origins": [
      "https://dictionary.cambridge.org"
    ]
  },
  "steps": [
    {
      "description": "Dictionary entry page /dictionary/english/<word>; read-only GET. Headword and parts of speech come from the entry header; each sense is a div.def-block holding the definition (.def) and the first example (.examp). Unknown words redirect to the dictionary index, which has no entry blocks, so the list is empty.",
      "expect": {
        "content_type": "html",
        "status": [
          200
        ]
      },
      "extract": {
        "html": {
          "headword": {
            "selector": ".pos-header .hw"
          },
          "part_of_speech": {
            "selector": ".pos-header .pos"
          }
        },
        "html_items": {
          "senses": {
            "fields": {
              "definition": {
                "selector": ".def"
              },
              "example": {
                "selector": ".examp"
              }
            },
            "max": 40,
            "selector": "div.def-block"
          }
        }
      },
      "id": "lookup",
      "request": {
        "headers": {
          "Accept": "text/html"
        },
        "method": "GET",
        "url": "/dictionary/english/{{params.query | lower | urlencode}}"
      }
    }
  ],
  "task": "Look up English words in Cambridge Dictionary",
  "tos": {
    "notes": "Not reviewed. One search page per call, the same page a visitor loads. The site's terms on automated access were not checked.",
    "reviewed": false
  },
  "verify": {
    "checks": [
      "length(output.senses) > `0`",
      "length(output.senses[?definition != `null`]) == length(output.senses)"
    ],
    "example_params": {
      "query": "serendipity"
    },
    "max_ms": 5000
  },
  "version": 1
}