A thin/partial wrapper around some JWI functionality, for interfacing the WordNet database using idiomatic Clojure.

You will need Leiningen 2.3.4 or above installed.

To build and install the library locally, run:

$ git submodule update --init data
$ lein test
$ lein install

There is an initial version hosted at Clojars. For leiningen include a dependency:

[clj-wordnet "0.1.0"]

For maven-based projects, add the following to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>clj-wordnet</groupId>
  <artifactId>clj-wordnet</artifactId>
  <version>0.1.0</version>
</dependency>

A snapshot version is also available, use "0.1.1-SNAPSHOT".

The WordNet database is not bundled in this project; it is referenced via a git submodule, in order to run integration tests. In order to ensure the submodule is properly initialised, follow the build instructions above.

(def wordnet (make-dictionary "../path-to/wordnet/dict/"))

(def dog (first (wordnet "dog" :noun)))

(:lemma dog)
=> "dog"

(:pos dog)
=> :noun

(:gloss dog)
=> "a member of the genus Canis (probably descended from the common wolf) that
    has been domesticated by man since prehistoric times; occurs in many breeds; 
    \"the dog barked all night\""   

(map :lemma (words (:synset dog))
=> ("dog" "domestic_dog", "Canis_familiaris")

(def frump (first (wordnet "frump" :noun)))

(map :lemma (related-words frump :derivationally-related))
=> ("frumpy")

(map :lemma (flatten (vals (related-synsets dog :hypernym))))
=> ("domestic_animal" "domesticated_animal" "canine" "canid")

The default dictionary will load definitions from the database as needed and they will be cached as necessary. If higher performance is required and there is sufficient memory available to the JVM, then the dictionary can be made to be resident entirely in memory, as below. This will force an immediate load of the dictionary into RAM, where there may be a perceptible delay on startup.

(def wordnet (make-dictionary "../path-to/wordnet/dict/" :in-memory))

Note: Wordnet is quite large, and usually won’t fit into the standard heap on most 32-bit JVMs. You need to increase your heap size. On the Sun JVM, this involves the command line flag -Xmx along with a reasonable heap size, say, 500 MB or 1 GB.

Word definitions can be fetched using the make-dictionary factory as per the example below:

(def wordnet (make-dictionary "../path-to/wordnet/dict/"))

(wordnet "car#n#1")    ; fetch the first noun definition for car

(wordnet "bus")        ; fetch a list of all definitions for bus

(wordnet "row" :noun)  ; fetch a list of all noun definitions for row

(wordnet "row#v#1")    ; fetch the single verb definition for row

(wordnet "WID-02086723-N-01-dog" ; fetch the word with the specified ID

(wordnet "SID-02086723-N" ; fetch the synset with the specified ID

The JWI has been mavenized and rolled up into a github repo, here: https://github.com/delver/jwi. The resulting artifacts have been deployed to http://repo.delver.io/releases, and this has been referenced in this project's repository resolution section.

• Implement (make-dictionary "../path-to/wordnet/dict/" :in-memory) to use RAM-based dictionary
• Coerce functions into separate namespace
• Re-implement (related-synsets ...) and (related-words ...)
• Push JWI 2.2.4 to central repository
• Unit tests & Travis CI
• Implement more similarity algorithms
• Improve performance

Same as JWI: MIT / Creative Commons 3.0