Wordor

Wordor is a proposed open data standard and repository for word origin information, intended to harmonize etymological data across languages and dictionaries. It defines a structured entry for each lemma that can include etymology, cognates, semantic domain, pronunciation, and usage examples. It is used by lexicographers, digital humanities projects, and natural language processing researchers to compare etymologies and track word histories.

The name Wordor is a contraction of word origin and is sometimes written as WORDOR when referred to as a project. The concept emerged from discussions about interoperability among lexical resources in the 2010s. The design emphasizes provenance, with references and confidence levels attached to etymologies.

Data model and content: Wordor entries typically include lemma, language, part of speech, segmented etymology showing derivational steps, cognates across related languages, semantic domains, and phonetic transcription. Entries may also include pronunciation guidelines, usage quotations, and cross-links to related lemmas. The model supports multilingual data and versioning.

Adoption and usage: Several academic and community dictionaries have experimented with Wordor-like schemas and some projects publish open data sets under permissive licenses. Adoption varies by project, and data may be exported to formats such as JSON-LD or TEI-based XML for integration with other lexicographic resources.

See also: Lexicography, Etymology, Wiktionary, WordNet, TEI, Lexical databases.