my $cmd = qq{egrep -m 1 "^$lemma:" /home/lexicon};
warn "Running [$cmd]";
my $lexical_entry = `$cmd`;

##</code><code>##

...
my $filename = '/home/lexicon';
open my $fh, '<', $filename
    or die "Couldn't open '$filename': $!";
while (<$fh>) {
    return $_ if /^$lemma:/;
};
...