Importing a dicrionary from a file

[Black Mantis]

hello
I am a newbie, and i am working on a program that uses a really big
dictionary. i was wondering if i could store the dictionary in a
seperate file, let's say dict.dat. Now, at the beggining of the program
i want to import that dictionary and get it ready, how would i do this?
is there a way to read the whole input file into one variable?

thanks for your help
keagan