I'm not sure where this would want to live in the process, but after poking around, I noted that purging wamerican and reinstalling it resulted in /etc/dictionaries-common/words being added as a link to /usr/share/dict/american-english. The multiple levels of indirection are perhaps unfortunate, but this will result in scripts depending on the presence of /usr/share/dict/words being able to run without error.
-- Mason Loring Bliss (( "In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams ma...@blisses.org )) build their nest with fragments dropped http://blisses.org/ (( from day's caravan." - Rabindranath Tagore -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org