WNB(1WN)

📦 version 3.0, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

WNB(1WN) — WordNet™ User Commands 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about wnb — the WordNet window-based browser interface. she's giving main character energy and she's about to make the whole WordNet database feel like a cozy little app you can just vibe with. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

wnb — WordNet window-based browser interface

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

wnb

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so wnb() hands you a whole window-based interface for browsing the WordNet database, and the way it does that is by letting synsets and relations show up as formatted text. for every search word you throw at it, you get a bunch of different searches available, and which ones you get depends on the syntactic category and whatever info is actually in the database. iykyk. 💅

wnb is written in Tcl/Tk, which is out there for Unix and Windows platforms. that's the slay part: the exact same code works on every supported WordNet platform with zero modification. no cap. 🌈

🎀 WNB WINDOWS 🎀

wnb() was built with a whole philosophy, and the philosophy is: only the searches and buttons that are applicable right now get displayed. so yes, the interface literally changes appearance as you use it. that's the vibe check passing in real time. ✨

use the standard windowing system mouse functions to open and close the WordNet Browser Window, move the window around, and resize it. go off. 🖱️

the WordNet Browser Window has these areas, top to bottom:

  • Menubar — a menubar runs along the top of the browser window, with pulldown menus and a button entitled File, History, Options, and Help.
  • Search Word Entry — right below the Menubar is a line for entering the search word. a search word can be a single word, a hyphenated string, or a collocation. case is ignored (she does not care about your capitalization). even though only uninflected forms of words are usually stored in WordNet, you may search for inflected forms — WordNet's morphological processor finds the base form automatically. she's smart like that. 🧚
  • Search Selection — below the Search Word Entry line is an area for selecting the search type and the senses to search. until a search word is entered, this area is blank. once a search word is entered, buttons appear corresponding to each syntactic category (Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb) in which the search string is defined in WordNet.

at the right edge of the Search Selection line there's a box for entering sense numbers. when this box is empty, you get search results for all senses of the search word that match the search type. you can restrict the search to one or more specific senses by entering a comma or space separated list of sense numbers in the Senses box. these sense numbers stay in effect until either you change or delete them, or a new search word is entered. periodt. 💅

  • Results Window — most of the browser window is literally just a big text buffer for displaying the results of WordNet searches. horizontal and vertical scroll bars are present so you can scroll through the output. iconic. 📜
  • Status Line — a status line lives at the bottom of the browser window. when search results are displayed in the Results Window, this status line reflects the type of search selected. when there's no search word entered, you're prompted with "Enter search word and press return." and if the search word you entered is not in WordNet, the message "Sorry, no matches found." is displayed. 😭

🔍 SEARCHING THE DATABASE 🔍

the WordNet browser navigates through WordNet in two steps, bestie. two. 🌸

  1. first, a search word is entered and an overview of all the senses of the word in all syntactic categories is displayed in the Results Window. the senses are grouped by syntactic category, and each synset is annotated as described above with synset_offset, lex_filename, and sense_number as dictated by the advanced search options set. the overview search also indicates how many of the senses in each syntactic category are represented in the tagged texts. this is how you figure out whether a sense's sense number is based on semantic tagging data, or was arbitrarily assigned. for each sense that has appeared in such texts, the number of semantic tags to that sense are indicated in parentheses after the sense number. 🫶
  2. then, within a syntactic category, a specific search is selected. the desired search is performed and the search results are displayed in the Results Window. you can run additional searches on the same word, or enter a new search word entirely. slay.

to enter a search word: click the mouse in the horizontal box labeled Search Word, type a single word, hyphenated string, or collocation and press RETURN.

wnb() responds by making a set of Part of Speech buttons appear in the Search Selection line. each button corresponds to a syntactic category in which the search string is defined in WordNet. at the same time, an Overview of the synsets for all senses of the search word is displayed in the Results Window. the Overview includes the gloss for each synset and also indicates which of the senses have appeared in the semantically tagged texts. for each sense that has appeared in such texts, the number of semantic tags to that sense are indicated in parentheses after the sense number. (yes this is the same deal as above — she's consistent. 💜)

the pulldown menus in the Search Selection line list all of the WordNet searches that can be performed for the search word in that part of speech. to select a search: highlight it by dragging the mouse to it, and release the mouse while it is highlighted. drag the mouse outside of the pulldown list and release to hide the menu without making a selection. dragging the mouse across the Part of Speech buttons displays the available searches for each syntactic category. ✨

to restrict a search to one or more senses within a syntactic category, enter a comma or space separated list of sense numbers in the Senses box before selecting a search.

after a search is selected, wnb() performs the search on the WordNet database and displays the formatted results in the Results Window. whenever search results are displayed, a button entitled Redisplay Overview is present at the right edge of the Search Word Entry line. clicking on this button redisplays the Overview of all synsets for the search word in the Results Window. 🔥

🌷 Changing the Search Word 🌷

a new search word can be entered at any time — just move to the Search Word Entry box, if necessary highlight it by clicking, erase the old string, type a new one and press RETURN. the Senses box is cleared if necessary, the Part of Speech buttons applicable to the new search word appear, and the Overview for the new search word is displayed. fresh start, new era. 🦋

the middle mouse button can also be used to select a new search word: place the mouse over any word in the Results Window and click. the selected word will replace the text in the Search Word Entry box, and the overview for that word will automatically be displayed. so convenient. 😌

to select a new search string collocation from text in the Results Window, highlight the text with the mouse and press CONTROL-S. 🎀

when a search is in progress, the message "Searching...(press escape to abort)" is displayed in the Status Line. note that most searches return very quickly, so honestly this message isn't even noticeable. but as indicated, pressing the ESCAPE key will interrupt the search. the results of the search obtained before the time the search was interrupted are displayed in the Results Window. 🫡

🎀 File Menu 🎀

✨ Find keywords by substring

Pops open a whole little window for searching WordNet for words or collocations that contain a specific substring. And here's the cute part: if there's already a search word sitting in the Search Word box, that's what gets used as the substring by default. Convenient!

The Substring Search Window has, bestie, literally everything you need:

  • a box for entering a substring
  • a pulldown menu to its right for specifying the part of speech to search
  • a large area for displaying the search results
  • action buttons at the bottom entitled Search, Save, Print, Dismiss

Once you've entered a substring and picked a part of speech, clicking the Search button searches all words and collocations in WordNet, in that syntactic category, that contain the substring — according to these criteria:

  1. The substring can appear at the beginning or end of a word, hyphenated string o collocation. (the typo is the original's, not mine 😭)
  2. The substring can appear in the middle of a hyphenated string or collocation, but only delimited on both sides by spaces or hyphens.

The results land in the big buffer. Click an item from the search results list and wnb() will automatically drop that word into the Search Word box of the WordNet Browser Window and run the Overview search for you. It's giving one-click, no cap. 💅

  • Save → generates a popup dialog for specifying a filename to save the substring search results to.
  • Print → generates a popup dialog in which a print command can be specified.
  • Dismiss → closes the Substring Search Window. bye bestie 🫶

✨ Save current display

Shows a popup dialog for specifying a filename to save the current Results Window contents to.

Shows a popup dialog in which you specify a print command that the current Results Window contents get piped to.

📌 Note — this option does not exist in the Windows version. she's Unix-only, sorry 💀

✨ Clear current display

Clears the Search Word and Senses boxes, and the Results Window. fresh start energy ✨

✨ Exit

Does what you would expect. 💀

🕰️ History

This pulldown menu contains a list of the last searches performed. Selecting an item from this list performs that search again — literally the rewind button of your whole WordNet journey.

The maximum number of searches stored in the list can be adjusted from the Options menu. The default is 10. 🌸

⚙️ Options

When this checkbox is selected, search results are preceded by some explanatory text about the type of search selected. This is off by default.

✨ Show descriptive gloss

When this checkbox is selected, synset glosses are displayed in all search results. This is set by default. 👑

Note that glosses are always displayed in the Overview. no take-backs.

✨ Wrap Lines

When this checkbox is selected, lines in the Results Window that are wider than the window are automatically wrapped. This is set by default. If it's not selected, a horizontal scroll bar is present if any lines are longer than the width of the window.

✨ Set advanced search options...

Selecting this item displays a popup window for setting the following search options:

  • Lexical file information
  • Synset location in database file
  • Sense number

Choices for each are:

  • Don't show (default)
  • Show with searches
  • Show with searches and overview

Okay so let's break down what all that actually does, because it's lowkey a lot:

When lexical file information is shown, the name of the lexicographer file is printed before each synset, enclosed in angle brackets (< ... >). When both lexical file information and synset location information are displayed, the synset location information appears first. If within one lexicographer file more than one sense of a word is entered, an integer lex_id is appended onto all but one of the word's instances to uniquely identify it. In each synset, each word having a non-zero lex_id is printed with the lex_id value printed immediately following the word. If both lexicographer information and sense numbers are displayed, lex_ids, if present, precede sense numbers.

When synset location is shown, the byte offset of the synset in the database "data" file corresponding to the syntactic category of the synset is printed before each synset, enclosed in curly braces ({ ... }). When both lexical file information and synset location information are displayed, the synset location information appears first.

When sense numbers are shown, the sense number of each word in each synset is printed immediately after the word, and is preceded by a number sign (#).

✨ Set maximum history length...

Displays a popup dialog in which the maximum number of previous searches to be kept on the History list can be set.

✨ Set font...

Displays a popup window for setting the font (typeface) and font size to use for the Results Window.

  • Typeface choices: Courier, Helvetica, and Times (default)
  • Font size: small, medium (default), or large

aesthetic matters bestie 🎀✨

✨ Save current options as default

Saves the currently set options. Next time the browser is started, these options will be used as the user defaults. iconic, consistent, reliable. 💅

🆘 Help

✨ Help on using the WordNet browser

Displays this manual page. (hi, you're here 👋)

✨ Help on WordNet terminology

Displays the wngloss(7WN) manual page.

✨ Display the WordNet license

Displays the WordNet copyright notice and license agreement.

✨ About the WordNet browser

Information about this application.

🌈 SHORCUTS 🌈

(yes, spelled exactly like that in the original, iykyk 🫶)

Clicking on any word in the Results Window while holding down the SHIFT key on the keyboard causes the browser to replace Search Word with the word and display its Overview and available searches. Clicking on any word in the Results Window with the middle mouse button does the same thing.

Pressing the CONTROL-S keys causes the browser to do as above on the text that is currently highlighted. Under Unix, this will work even if the highlighted text is in another window. 👑 And it works on hyphenated strings and collocations, as well as individual words. so versatile fr fr.

Pressing the CONTROL-G keys displays the Substring Search Window.

🔍 SEARCH RESULTS 🔍

Okay so your search results? They show up in the Results Window, and bestie there are horizontal and vertical scroll bars so you can vibe your way through everything. Scroll away. 🦋

Every search except Overview lists all the senses that match, in this general format. Anything wrapped in italicized square brackets — like [ ... ] — might just not be there. It's giving "optional, iykyk". ✨

If a search can't be run on some of the senses of searchstr, the results get a little header that looks like:

X of Y senses of searchstr
  • One line telling you how many senses matched the search you picked.
  • Then each matching sense, displayed like this:
Sense n
[{synset_offset}] [<lex_filename>]  word1[#sense_number][,  word2...]

Where:

  • n is the sense number of the search word
  • synset_offset is the byte offset of the synset in the data.pos file that matches the syntactic category
  • lex_filename is the name of the lexicographer file the synset came from
  • word1 is the first word in the synset — and no, that's not necessarily the word you searched, plot twist 😭
  • sense_number is the WordNet sense number assigned to the word right before it

synset_offset, lex_filename and sense_number only show up if you turned on the right Options. No option, no tea. 🫶

  • The synsets that match your search get printed under each sense's synset output described above. Each line starts with a marker (usually =>), then a synset formatted exactly like above. If a search walks more than one level down the tree, the following lines get indented by spaces matching their level in the hierarchy. Glosses show up in parentheses at the end of each synset if the appropriate Option is set. Every synset gets exactly one line. Periodt. 💅
  • Senses are ordered most used → least used, with the most common sense numbered 1. Frequency of use comes from how many times a sense is tagged across the various semantic concordance texts. Senses that aren't semantically tagged come after the ordered ones. Heads up tho: this ordering is only an estimate based on usage in a small corpus. Small sample size energy. 🙈
  • Verb senses can be grouped by similarity of meaning instead of ordered by frequency of use. When you pick the "Synonyms, grouped by similarity" search, senses that are close in meaning print together, and a line of dashes marks the end of a group. Peep wngroups(7WN) for the whole discussion on how senses get grouped. 🌸
  • The "Derivationally Related Forms" search output shows word forms that are morphologically related to searchstr. Every word form pointed to from searchstr gets displayed, preceded by RELATED TO-> and the syntactic category of the link, and then on the next line, its synset. After the word form comes #n, where n is the WordNet sense number of the term being pointed to. 🔥
  • The "Domain" and "Domain Terms" searches show the domain a synset has been classified into, and, conversely, all the terms assigned to a specific domain. A domain is either a TOPIC, REGION or USAGE, which is reflected in the specific pointer character stored in the database and shown in the output. A Domain search on a term shows the domain — if there is one — that each synset containing searchstr has been classified in. The output shows the domain type (TOPIC, REGION or USAGE), then the syntactic category of the domain synset and the terms in the synset. Each term is followed by #n, where n is the WordNet sense number of that term. The converse search, Domain Terms, shows all the synsets that have been placed into the domain searchstr, with analogous markers. Mirror mirror. 🪞
  • When the "Sentence Frames" search is specified, sample illustrative sentences and generic sentence frames get displayed. If a sample sentence is found, the base form of the search word is substituted into the sentence, and it's printed below the synset, preceded by the EX: marker. When no sample sentences are found, the generic sentence frames are displayed instead. Sentence frames that work for all words in a synset get the marker *> in front. If a frame only works for the search word, it gets => in front. 👑
  • Adjective search results are slightly different from other parts of speech, because of course they are. 💅 When an adjective prints, its direct antonym also prints in parentheses, if it has one. When the search word is in a head synset, all of that head synset's satellites are displayed too. An adjective's position relative to the noun may be restricted to prenominal, postnominal or predicative. Where those restrictions exist, they're noted in parentheses.
  • When an adjective is a participle of a verb, the output says which verb and shows its synset.
  • When an adverb is derived from an adjective, the specific adjectival sense it's based on gets indicated. ✨
  • The morphological transformations the search code does can leave you with more than one word to search for. wnb() automatically runs the requested search on all of the strings and returns the results grouped by word. Example time: the verb saw is both the present tense of saw and the past tense of see. Not confusing at all, love that for us 😭. When there's more than one word to search for, results are grouped by word.

🩺 DIAGNOSTICS 🩺

If the WordNet database files can't be opened, error messages get displayed. Usually you fix this by setting the environment variables described below to the proper location of the WordNet database for your installation. You got this. 🫶

🌈 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES (UNIX) 🌈

  • WNHOME — Base directory for WordNet. Default is /usr/local/WordNet-3.0.
  • WNSEARCHDIR — Directory where the WordNet database has been installed. Default is WNHOME/dict.

🪟 REGISTRY (WINDOWS) 🪟

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\WNHome — Base directory for WordNet. Default is C:\Program Files\WordNet\3.0.
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\wnres — User's default browser options.

📁 FILES 📁

  • index.pos — database index files
  • data.pos — database data files
  • *.vrb — files of sentences illustrating the use of verbs
  • pos.exc — morphology exception lists

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

wnintro(1WN), wn(1WN), wnintro(3WN), lexnames(5WN), senseidx(5WN), wndb(5WN), wninput(5WN), morphy(7WN), wngloss(7WN), wngroups(7WN).

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Please reports bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu. (Yes bestie, "reports" — I'm quoting, not correcting, don't come for me 💀)

That's the whole page, you made it, main character behavior fr fr 👑

This was WordNet 3.0, dated Dec 2006, and the page is WNB(1WN). Now go search some words and slay. 💖 ✨ 🎀 🦋 🌸 💅 🫶 🔥 👑 🌈 ⭐ 💀 🍓 🧚 💜

📦 where this page comes from