Keeping an advanced dictionary in Org-mode?

[Christian Moe <mail@christianmoe.com>]

Hi,

Is anybody using Org-mode to build an advanced dictionary with 
sub-entries, tags etc.? Would you be willing to share a setup?

For example, the obvious way to build a dictionary would be to use a 
dictionary list (I borrow a few English-French lines from the 
wonderful WordReference.com site):

- pine ::
   (/paɪn/)
   1. /m noun/ [bot.] pin; *stripped ~* pin décapé.
   2. /intr verb/ languir (*for* après; *to do* de faire)

This looks nice, but unfortunately, you cannot set tags or properties 
on dictionary terms, so it's not particularly amenable to fancy 
searching, mapping etc.

On the other hand, you could do something like this:

* pine
   :PROPERTIES:
   :Pronunciation: /paɪn/
   :END:
** pin 					:bot:
    :PROPERTIES:
    :Word_class: noun
    :Gender:   m
    :END:							
    *stripped ~* pin décapé.
** languir
    :PROPERTIES:
    :Word_class: verb
    :Transitivity: intr
    :END:
    (*for* après; *to do* de faire)

It's a pain to do, and because of outline folding, it could be a pain 
to look up meanings, and you might need to do some serious 
post-processing on the export to make it look anything like a 
dictionary. But when you're done, you could extract a list of all 
botanical terms (:bot:), or of words and pronunciations only... etc.

So for my growing pile of translation notes, I might like to keep that 
kind of thing. But there are so many ways it could be organized - what 
do you put in subheadings? what in entry text below subheadings? what 
in tags, what in properties? etc. So if someone has an example that 
works for them, I'd like to see one.

(Org may not be the best tool for this job, of course, but it's the 
right tool for me...)

Yours,
Christian