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Current api.php returns JSON as an anonymous object. This works great when accessing api.php via Ajax.

It does not work for accessing api.php via the <script> tag.

The reason for accessing api.php via the <script> tag is because it is not subject to the same-domain security policy. It would provide a way to access de.wiktionary.org from en.wiktionary.org. This is not possible with Ajax / XmlHttpRequest.

Most people think of the <script> tag as a way to import executable JavaScript code, but it can just as well include data in the form of a variable declaration.

Api.php in its current form is not usable for this since the JavaScript returned via JSON is not a valid JavaScript statement on its own:

{ "query": { "pages": { ... } } } }

But it can be trivially transformed into an independent statement thus:

var wgApiJsonResult = { "query": { "pages": { ... } } } };

Ideally an implementation would take as a parameter the variable name to assign to, but a standard variable name could easily be reused  if this is nontrivial to achieve.