$word = "book"; // initialise the session, this time with no URL $ch = curl_init(); // Set the URL, which includes $word, and is of the dict protocol curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "dict://dict.org/d:($word)"); // Return the output from the cURL session rather than displaying in the browser. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //Execute the session, returning the results to $definition, and close. $definition = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); //display the results - I'll leave the formatting to you print "Definition of $definition: $definition"; var_dump($definition);