"Wood, straw, corn, garbage, and sewage-sludge may be dried and gasified. After purification the so called Fischer Tropsch process is used to produce synthetic diesel. [1] Other attempts use enzymatic processes and are also economic in case of high oil prices. Synthetic diesel may also be produced out of natural gas in the GTL process. Such synthetic diesel has 30% less particulate emissions than conventional diesel (US- California) [2]. Another approach is to use a blend of 95% ethanol (typically derived from corn) and 5% gasoline in what is termed E95 as a substitute for diesel, analogous to the E85 ethanol-based fuel used in flexible-fuel vehicle gasoline engines."
You're correct in that I'm not a motorhead. Maybe you should inform TheFreeDictionary that their information is not correct.
The only way you could put ethanol in a diesel engine is if you built the engine from the ground up specifically for (and only for) ethanol. Ethanol and diesel have greatly different ignition properties, and to get ethanol to ignite without a spark, you would have to increase the compression ratio signiticantly.