a Python library for wordnets

Available Wordnets | Documentation | FAQ | Migrating from NLTK | Citation

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Wn is a Python library for exploring information in wordnets.

Installation

Install it from PyPI using pip:

pip install wn

or uv:

uv add wn

[!IMPORTANT] Existing users of Wn may encounter an error about an incompatible database schema. The remedy is to rebuild the database. There is a new function to help with this:

>>> wn.reset_database(rebuild=True)  # re-add any indexed lexicons

or

>>> wn.reset_database()  # initialize without re-adding; start from scratch

Getting Started

First, download some data:

python -m wn download oewn:2025+  # the Open English WordNet 2025+

Now start exploring:

>>> import wn
>>> en = wn.Wordnet('oewn:2025+')       # Create Wordnet object to query
>>> ss = en.synsets('win', pos='v')[0]  # Get the first synset for 'win'
>>> ss.definition()                     # Get the synset's definition
'be the winner in a contest or competition; be victorious'

Features

• Multilingual by design; first-class support for wordnets in any language
• Interlingual queries via the Collaborative Interlingual Index
• Six similarity metrics
• Functions for exploring taxonomies
• Support for lemmatization (Morphy for English is built-in) and unicode normalization
• Full support of the WN-LMF 1.4 format, including word pronunciations and lexicon extensions
• SQL-based backend offers very fast startup and improved performance on many kinds of queries

Available Wordnets

Any WN-LMF-formatted wordnet can be added to Wn's database from a local file or remote URL, but Wn also maintains an index (see wn/index.toml) of available projects, similar to a package manager for software, to aid in the discovery and downloading of new wordnets. The projects in this index are listed below.

English Wordnets

There are several English wordnets available. In general it is recommended to use the latest Open English Wordnet, but if you have stricter compatibility needs for, e.g., experiment replicability, you may try the OMW English Wordnet based on WordNet 3.0 (compatible with the Princeton WordNet 3.0 and with the NLTK), or OpenWordnet-EN (for use with the Portuguese wordnet OpenWordnet-PT).

Other Wordnets and Collections

These are standalone non-English wordnets and collections. The wordnets of each collection are listed further down.

Open Multilingual Wordnet (OMW) Collection

The Open Multilingual Wordnet collection (omw:1.4) installs the following lexicons (from here) which can also be downloaded and installed independently:

Open Wordnet (OWN) Collection

The Open Wordnets for Portuguese and English collection (own:1.0.0) installs the following lexicons (from here) which can also be downloaded and installed independently:

Collaborative Interlingual Index

While not a wordnet, the Collaborative Interlingual Index (CILI) represents the interlingual backbone of many wordnets. Wn, including interlingual queries, will function without CILI loaded, but adding it to the database makes available the full list of concepts, their status (active, deprecated, etc.), and their definitions.

Changes to the Index

ewn → oewn

The 2021 version of the Open English WordNet (oewn:2021) has changed its lexicon ID from ewn to oewn, so the index is updated accordingly. The previous versions are still available as ewn:2019 and ewn:2020.

pwn → omw-en, omw-en31

The wordnet formerly called the Princeton WordNet (pwn:3.0, pwn:3.1) is now called the OMW English Wordnet based on WordNet 3.0 (omw-en) and the OMW English Wordnet based on WordNet 3.1 (omw-en31). This is more accurate, as it is a OMW-produced derivative of the original WordNet data, and it also avoids license or trademark issues.

*wn → omw-* for OMW wordnets

All OMW wordnets have changed their ID scheme from ...wn to omw-.. and the version no longer includes +omw (e.g., bulwn:1.3+omw is now omw-bg:1.4).

Citation

Michael Wayne Goodman and Francis Bond. 2021. Intrinsically Interlingual: The Wn Python Library for Wordnets In Proceedings of the 11th Global Wordnet Conference, pages 100–107, University of South Africa (UNISA). Global Wordnet Association.