When a statement returns boolean value, how to use that value in an if statement

I am a new learner in programming, and I was trying to check whether a word exists in a file. I put the words into a dictionary (the exercise told me to put it in a dict as a key and ignore the value), and then let the user input a word, then I tried to check whether it is in the dictionary.

words_dict = dict()

fhand = open('desktop/codingMaterial/words.txt')
for line in fhand:
    line = line.rstrip()
    t = line.split()
    for word in t:
        words_dict[word] = 0

# check if word exists
v = input('Enter a variable: ')
if v in words_dict == True:
    print('Exist.')
else:
    print('Does not exist.')

I tried to run this, but no matter which word I input, the output was always 'Does not exist.'. I think I did something wrong in the if statement, but I am not sure how to fix it.