Thesaurusul

Thesaurusul is a digital lexical resource designed to function as a comprehensive thesaurus and semantic network for multiple languages. It combines traditional synonym and antonym relationships with sense-level glosses, usage notes, collocations, and cross-language mappings, enabling context-aware word suggestions for writers, editors, and language learners.

Origin and name: The term thesaurusul blends thesaurus with a suffix hinting at a universal lexicon. Conceived by a collaborative group of linguists and software developers, the project positions itself as an open, community-curated repository intended to complement monolingual dictionaries with richly interconnected word senses.

Data model and features: Data model uses nodes for senses, edges for relations (synonym, antonym, related term, usage note, collocation). It provides a REST API, context-aware search, sense disambiguation, and supports offline dumps. It offers multilingual search, part-of-speech tagging, frequency indicators, and example sentences.

Data sources and licensing: Thesaurusul aggregates data from WordNet-style databases, OpenThesaurus, Wiktionary, ConceptNet, and user contributions, with curation workflows. Data is released under open licenses (varies by module) to encourage reuse in education and software.

History and governance: Conceptualized in 2013, with early alpha releases in 2015 and a stable public release in 2018. It is maintained by an international community and a governance council that manages licensing, data quality, and contribution guidelines.

Usage and reception: Used by writing tools, language-learning platforms, and accessibility projects to propose paraphrases, improve vocabulary, and understand semantic relations. Critics point to data licensing complexity and potential inconsistencies across languages as ongoing challenges.

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