Agile TortoiseTerminology
A browser for the English language
The Terminology Dictionary
Terminology includes an offline semantic reference based on the Open English WordNet project. It is different from some other pure dictionary-type resources and is a bit of a hybrid between a dictionary and a thesaurus.
What is WordNet?
Princeton University’s WordNet lexical database is a semantic reference focused on the relationships between words in the English language. Princeton no longer maintains WordNet but it is updated through the Open English WordNet project. Wordnet is unique in that is focused on the relationships between words. It provides concise definitions and sample sentences but also a variety of other information about synonyms, antonyms, and more and less specific terms - as well as relationships like “member of” and “parts.” (see below for more information on relationships available).
We do not make any modifications, either as additions or omissions, from the original WordNet source data, but we do update our source data periodically when the project releases new versions.
Why isn’t a certain word in Terminology?
Terminology’s data is not designed to be an exhaustive dictionary. It lists only nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in their root (lemma) form – along with an assortment of important phrases and proper names of people and locations. Terminology’s concise definitions and extensive word relationships make it a great cross between a dictionary and thesaurus and particularly well suited to assisting in word selection.
If a particular word is not available in the offline dictionary, Terminology’s actions provide an easy way to use other online resources to further research a term.
What “word relationships” are available in Terminology?
Not all of these relationships are applicable to all terms in Terminology’s dictionary, but all the following types of relationships from Wordnet’s data are exposed where available:
- Synonyms
- Antonyms
- Less specific
- More specific
- Parts
- Part of
- Members
- Member of
- Contains
- Used in
- Pertains to
- Entailments
- Is a
- Examples
- Similar to
- See also
- Attributes
- Causes
- Related
- Topic Members
- Member of topics
- Region
- Region members