Synonyms

This is a project at Vancouver Webpages to generate copyright-free lists of English synonyms for a search engine.

The purpose is to generate a searchable dictionary of English synonyms and classes, such that if someone does a search for "automobile" they will probably be 99% satisfied with a match of "car", and 30% satisfied with a match of "vehicle".
While many dictionaries and thesauri exist on the Web, they are not usually available for download, and don't usually give single word equivalents. Also, many have been withdrawn due to copyright problems. The product of this project will be made freely available by ftp when sufficient entries have been added.

Language

The main language of this project is standard Canadian English. US and British spellings can be entered as synonyms.

Synonyms

One or more single-word close synonyms for the word, whitespace separated. Words should have a close bi-directional correspondance, eg. "automobile" for "car", "regulation" for "law".

Classes

Classes or categories for the word. Objects of type "word" should be a (large) subset of objects of type "class", e.g. "dog" is a member of classes "mammal" and "animal".

Examples (good):

rottweiler : dog
xenon : gas
car : vehicle
laptop : computer

Examples (bad, too loose):

spaniel : animal
laptop : machine
madonna : person

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