Okay, so ultimately, installing an offline dictionary on Linux is pretty simple. Harriet uses Debian which uses apt, so we apt install dictd and we apt install dict-[whatever dictionaries we want] – we ended up with dict-gcide, dict-elements, dict-foldoc, dict-wn, and dict-vera – and then we set our dictionary app to use localhost for the dictionary server and we're done. Once we knew what to do, it took seconds.
On the other hand, what the fuck is a dictionary server. Like obviously I see the benefit of using the same app for both online and offline dictionary lookup, and presumably the system load is beyond negligible for a computer as beastly as a generic 2011 business laptop, but what the fuck is this.
Linux is fucking weird sometimes, y'all.
@aescling …so, what's going on is that they've had fifty-some years to work on this and come up with newer and cooler ways to look up dictionary entries, and we just arrived now with our 1970-tier knowledge of how to do a dictionary and been surprised it's more sophisticated than a grep. That scans.