Lexicor

Lexicor is an open-source lexical database and toolkit designed for lexicography, natural language processing, and language data management. It provides a structured schema for lexemes, senses, semantic relations, etymologies, and usage examples, with support for multiple languages and scripts. The project offers a RESTful API, a web-based editor, and command-line tools to manage lexical data.

The name Lexicor combines elements from 'lexicon' and 'core' or 'corpus' to reflect its role as a core resource for word data. The project adopts standard data formats and interoperable schemas to facilitate linking with other linguistic resources.

History: The project emerged from a collaboration among linguists, lexicographers, and software developers in the early 2020s. The first public release appeared in 2022, followed by successive updates introducing multi-language support, sophisticated search, and export options.

Design and data model: Lexicor uses a modular architecture with entries organized as lemmas with associated senses, parts of speech, grammatical notes, examples, etymologies, and semantic relations such as synonyms and antonyms. Data can be stored in JSON or YAML and exported in TEI, JSON-LD, or CSV formats. It emphasizes stable identifiers and versioning.

Licensing and access: Lexicor is distributed under an open-source license (MIT). Community contributions are governed by a contributor license agreement. Documentation emphasizes data quality, provenance, and licensing compatibility with other lexical resources.

Applications and impact: The system is used by dictionary publishers, linguistic researchers, and language technology projects to compile, compare, and reuse lexical data. It supports automated lexicographic workflows, domain-specific glossaries, and cross-lingual studies.