Relationships in Words R Us

Words R Us incorporates a number of relationships between words. This page defines the terms used for the relationships. The chart above shows these relationships as used throughout the system.

Synset - this is a term coined for Wordnet. It means a group of synonym words and is the basic building block of Words R Us.

Synonym - This is perhaps the best known relationship. Synonyms are words or phrases that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language, for example shut is a synonym of close.
synonyms: alternate, substitute, alternative, equivalent, euphemism
"'harsh' may be used as synonym for 'oppressive'"

hypernym - The generic term used to designate a whole class of specific instances. Y is a hypernym of X if X is a (kind of) Y.

antonym - These are words which have opposite meanings. (e.g., bad and good ).

meronym - Is a part of. The name of a constituent part of, the substance of, or a member of something. X is a meronym of Y if X is a part of Y .

holonym - The name of the whole of which the meronym names a part. Y is a holonym of X if X is a part of Y .

hyponym - The specific term used to designate a member of a class. X is a hyponym of Y if X is a (kind of) Y. 'A German Shepherd is a kind of dog.

indirect antonym - An adjective in a satellite synset that does not have a direct antonym has an indirect antonym via the direct antonym of the head synset.

instance - A proper noun that refers to a particular, unique referent (as distinguished from nouns that refer to classes). This is a specific form of hyponym.

attribute - something that distinguishes an object or individual from others

verb group - a group containing at least one verb (the head), and often other words such as auxiliaries and modal verbs. For example, 'could be', 'shouted', 'must go', and 'have been robbed' are all verb groups.

entails - Involve (something) as a necessary or inevitable part or consequence. ‘a situation which entails considerable risks’

also see - compare this term for further explanation or shades of meaning

causes - A person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition.

derivation - The formation of a word from another word or from a root in the same or another language.

cognate - Words which are the same or nearly the same in two languages. This relationship is not implemented in Wordnet. It is unique to Words R Us.

loan word - A word which has come into common usage from another language. Adios and Taco are example loan words from Spanish. This relationship is not implemented in Wordnet. It is unique to Words R Us.

topic domain - A subject, theme, category or general area of interest. Wordnet introduced 41 topic domains. This is too broad for most uses. For example '05' represents animals and '20' represents plants. Wordnet Version 3.0 began work with the topic of biology to further classify these biological terms. A discussion is available under the Biology section of Words R Us. We are working for further classify these topics which are the basis of our bi-lingual phrasebooks and topical dictionaries.

region domain - This identifies terms by geograpical or dialect usage. For example, in English there are dialectical differences between British and American English, and between the terms commonly used in Boston and in Texas. Some languages are much more complex in this area than English. Wordnet has not implemented this relationship to any meaningful degree. We are doing some work in this area with WordsRUs.

usage domain - This groups terms by their usage It is somewhat related to topic domains, but more granular in its grouping. This is not implemented in Wordnet to any meaningful degree. WordsRUs uses this usage domain groupling for our bi-lingual dictionaries in medicine and construction and computers, etc.

translation - Wordnet was developed for English only. Work has been done and is on-going in many other languages. WordsRUs focuses on this relationship primarily for the languages of the world beyond the 'top 100' which have been incorporated into the Google and Bing translation tools.

cognate - These are terms which are the same or nearly the same in two languages. Some of these may be 'loan words' which have entered a language and come into common use such as 'taco' and 'adios' which are in common use in English from Spanish. Others are words which share a common heritage from some other language, for example most of the western Europe languages share many of the words from Latin as their common core.