OpenThesaurus is a multilingual

thesaurus A thesaurus (: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar me ...

project built in open collaboration by volunteers. Its data is freely available as

open content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software, software program, or any other creative Media (communication), content for which there are very minimal ...

. It is known for its usage in the applications

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...

KWord KWord is a deprecated word processor and a desktop publishing application, part of the KOffice suite. It has been obsoleted by Calligra Words of the Calligra Suite. History KWord was created by Reginald Stadlbauer as part of the KOffice proj ...

Lyx LyX (styled as LYX; pronounced ) is an open-source software, open source, graphical user interface document processor based on the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, which follow the WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") ...

, and Apple Dictionary.

The database takes words that are associated with at least one meaning. Apart from synonyms, it also contains some taxonomic relations. There is a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

, a Norwegian, a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

, a Portuguese, a Slovak, a Slovenian, a

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

and a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

version available. The German version has over 280,000 synonyms.

Access and editing

The data is freely available under the terms of the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

(LGPL). The database can be searched online without login through a web frontend on the website. Apart from that the data is also available in formats for use with the

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...

s of the

office suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintin ...

and

(

Writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short sto ...

) or as a complete

database dump A database dump contains a record of the table structure and/or the data from a database and is usually in the form of a list of SQL statements ("SQL dump"). A database dump is most often used for backing up a database so that its contents can ...

. With a free account users that are logged in can also add and alter entries. All entries have to be checked at least once before a release is made.

History

The cause for the start of the project was the arrival of OpenOffice.org in 2002, which was missing the thesaurus of its parent,

StarOffice StarOffice is a discontinued proprietary software, proprietary office suite. Its source code continues today in derived open-source office suites Collabora Online and LibreOffice. StarOffice supported the OpenOffice.org XML file format, as well ...

, due to its licensing. OpenThesaurus filled that gap by importing possible synonyms from a freely available German/English dictionary and refining and updating these in

crowdsourced Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digit ...

work through the use of a web application. Since version 2.0.3 OpenOffice.org innately ships with OpenThesaurus.Open Thesaurus: Mitbauen am Schatzhaus » blog.frei!
/ref> The project has gained a lot of popularity following the arrival of Apple Dictionary in Mac OS X 10.5, which can integrate OpenThesaurus data through a plugin.

Literature

* * Naber D
OpenThesaurus: Building a Thesaurus with a Web Community.
2004. * {{Citation , author =Daniel Naber , date=March 2005 , title =OpenThesaurus — Ein offenes deutsches Wortnetz , work =Sprachtechnologie, mobile Kommunikation und linguistische Ressourcen: Beiträge zur GLDV-Tagung 2005 in Bonn , publisher =Peter-Lang-Verlag , publication-place =Frankfurt , pages =422–433 , url =http://www.danielnaber.de/publications/gldv-openthesaurus.pdf , accessdate =

External links

Project homepage

References

Online dictionaries Thesauri (lexicography)

Contents

Access and editing

History

Literature

External links

References