.dic line format definition

Question

I am currently investigating the most appropriate dictionary to use in an application I am building.

Inspecting the dictionaries which are bundled with Sublime Text 2, the file format is as you would expect - a list of alphabetically ordered words. However, alot of those words have additional information appended to them. Take this snippet as an example:

abaft
abbreviation/M
abdicate/DNGSn
Abelard/M
abider/M
Abidjan
ablaze
abloom
aboveground
abrader/M
Abram/M
abreaction/MS
abrogator/MS
abscond/DRSG
absinthe/MS
absoluteness/S
absorbency/SM
abstract/ShTVDPiGY
absurdness/S

A fruitless Google search has not shed any light on what the letters after the slash (/) mean.

Maybe they hint at the sex of the word, but that is only a guess and I'd prefer to read a formal explanation of their meaning.

Has anybody come across these?

Answer 1

The letters following the slash are called affixes. These encodings can be prefixes or suffixes that may be applied to the root word.

See this blog post for a nice explanation and examples of what these affixes can be used for.

Another place to look is the aspell manual.