KRENGLE > Word Definitions
In this dictionary, every word has its' own definition page,
listing all the available information: meaning, pronunciation,
example sentences, and relations to other words.
An entry word can often span several senses and grammatical
categories. When a word has more than one sense, its' page starts
with an overview section, with links to each different sense.
Pronunciation and Rhymes
The pronunciation of most words is indicated by a
phonetical transcription derived from
The Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary, version 0.6,
Copyright 1998 by Carnegie Mellon University.
Being an American dictionary, it mostly reflects American pronunciation,
which is sometimes quite different from the British one.
The phonetical transcription is represented in an "arpabet",
where a quote denotes primary stress.
Word meaning
Each word entry starts with a short section giving
a definition of the word. Many words
are illustrated by English sentences, showing
actual usage.
For verbs, there is a special section: the generic
frames. These are not sentences, but abstract patterns,
showing the entities (persons or things) which can be
associated with the verb.
Verbal agreement is not taken into account.
Relations between word senses
The next section lists the relations between word entries and other terms.
Each word can be related to other words in a number of ways:
- Synonyms
-
Words that can be used instead of each other: "car"
and "automobile" are synonyms. Synonyms belong
to the same grammatical category.
- Similar
-
Denotes meaning similarity between words that cannot always
be used instead of each other, for instance because
they only share a part of their meaning. As an example,
"absurd" is similar to both "illogical"
and "foolish", but there are also some differences
between the senses of these adjectives.
- Broader
-
Hypernyms are more general nouns or verbs. Hypernymy is the inverse
of hyponymy: "vehicle" has a broader sense than
"car", while the sense of "ambulance" is narrower,
so "ambulance" is a hyponym of "car", and
"car" is a hypernym of "ambulance".
- Narrower
-
Hyponyms are more specific nouns or verbs. This relation provides
the hierarchical organization of the dictionary: most words are
hyponyms of one or several more general terms.
At the top of the noun hierarchy, only the following broad notions
are not hyponyms of other nouns:
- "entity"
- "psychological feature"
- "abstraction"
- "state"
- "event"
- "act"
- "group"
- "possession"
- "phenomenon"
Every noun in the dictionary is a hyponym of one of these 9 most
general terms.
- Is member of,
Has members
-
Member meronymy is a relation between nouns
and sets, denoting set membership. For instance, an
"alphabet" is a set of letters, also called characters.
Thus "letter of the alphabet" and
"alphabetic character" are members of "alphabet".
- Is part of,
Has parts
-
An "accelerator" is part of a "car".
A "car" has an "accelerator" as part.
- Is substance of,
Has substance
-
Substance meronyms: "oxygen" is one substance of
the "air" that we breathe. Inversely, the "air"
has "oxygen" as substance.
- Caused by,
Entails
-
These are relations between two verbs, indicating
that the action denoted by one verb necessarily
precedes, or follows the action denoted by the other verb.
To "awake" entails to "sleep", because
it is not possible to awake without first sleeping.
In order to "travel" it is necessary to "move".
- Is attribute of,
Has attribute
-
Denotes common associations between some adjectives and nouns:
the noun "age", for instance, is often used together with
attributes like the adjectives "young" and "old".
- Contrary
-
Symmetrical relation between opposite word senses
(antonyms):
the verb "accept" is the contrary of "refuse".
The noun "presence" is the contrary of "absence".
- See also
-
Additional information about verbs and adjectives.
With the verb "think", for instance, it can
be relevant to also look at more specialized constructions
like "think out", or "think back".
- Is participle of,
Has participle
-
A relation between some adjectives and the verbs
from which they are derived. For instance, the adjective
"applied" is derived from the verb "apply".
- Related grammatical categories
-
A relation that shows how some words
are derived from or pertain to words belonging to
other parts of speech. For example, the adjective
"yearly" is related to the noun "year"
(and vice versa).
Mathematical properties of the semantic relations
The traditional definition of a reflexive relation
is that for every X, the relation holds between X and X itself.
Since nothing can be broader than itself, strict hypernymy and
hyponymy are irreflexive: a word can neither be a
hypernym nor a hyponym of itself.
Hypernymy and hyponymy are inverse relations:
whenever X is a hypernym of Y, then Y is a hyponym of X.
Some other relations, such as synonymy and antonymy are
symmetric, meaning that everytime the relation holds
between A and B, it also holds between B and A. For example,
saying that A is a synonym of B, is the same as saying that B
is a synonym of A.
In the current version of HyperDic, WordNet
antonymy is expanded from a relation between words, to a relation
between word sets. This produces many new antonym pairs,
and introduces a new property: the set of antonyms
of a word's synonyms is now equal to the set of synonyms of
that word's antonyms.
Another interesting property is transitivity:
whenever A is broader than B, and B is broader than C,
then A is also broader than C. Since hypernymy and hyponymy
are transitive, they provide a partial ordering of the
English vocabulary. For example, in version 2.0 of
WordNet,
the longest transitive hypernymy derivation has 17 levels,
going from the most specific "rock hind, Epinephelus adscensionis",
to the broadest "entity".
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