# man > american-english(5)

[_american-english_(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/american-english/5/markdown)                         Users' Manual                        [_american-english_(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/american-english/5/markdown)

## NAME
       american-english - a list of English words

## DESCRIPTION
       **/usr/share/dict/american-english **is an ASCII file which contains an alphabetic list of words,
       one per line.

## FILES
       There may be any number of word lists in /usr/share/dict/.  _/etc/dictionaries-common/words_ is
       a    symbolic    link    to    the    currently-chosen    _/usr/share/dict/<language>_    file.
       _/usr/share/dict/words_ is a symbolic link to _/etc/dictionaries-common/words_, and is  the  name
       by which other software should refer to the system word list.  See [**select-default-wordlist**(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/select-default-wordlist/8/markdown)
       for more information, and/or to change the currently-chosen word list.

       The  directory  _/usr/share/dict_  can  contain word lists for many languages, with name of the
       language in English, e.g., _/usr/share/dict/french_ and _/usr/share/dict/danish_ contain  respec‐
       tively  lists of French and Danish words if they exist.  Such lists should be coded using the
       ISO 8859-1 character set encoding.

## SEE ALSO
       [**ispell**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/ispell/1/markdown), [**select-default-wordlist**(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/select-default-wordlist/8/markdown), and the _Filesystem_ _Hierarchy_ _Standard_.

## HISTORY
       The words lists are not specific, and may be generated from any number of sources.

       The system word list used to be _/usr/dict/words_.  For compatibility,  software  should  check
       that location if _/usr/share/dict/words_ does not exist.

## AUTHOR
       Word  lists  are  collected and maintained by various authors.  The Debian English word lists
       are built from the SCOWL (Spell- Checker Oriented Word Lists) package, whose upstream  editor
       is Kevin Atkinson <<kevina@users.sourceforge.net>>.

Debian                                      16 June 2003                         [_american-english_(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/american-english/5/markdown)