Wordsto

Wordsto is a term used in digital lexicography to describe a compact, machine-readable record that encodes information about a word, including its form, lemma, part of speech, senses, and translations. The concept emphasizes structured data that supports computational processing, cross-linguistic comparison, and efficient dictionary construction. While not standardized as a single specification, wordsto entries typically aim to be interoperable across projects through common schemas and identifiers.

Etymology and scope: The name combines “word” with a suffix suggesting storage or repository, reflecting its function as a store of lexical information. It is not tied to a single organization or framework, and different projects may adopt slightly different conventions for fields and identifiers.

Structure and data model: A typical wordsto entry includes fields such as id, form, lemma, part_of_speech, senses (each with a definition, examples, and cross-language translations), morphological features, etymology, frequency, and usage notes. Some implementations adopt JSON-LD or RDF to enable linked data, facilitating connections to related entries like affixes, synonyms, and lexical ontologies.

Applications: Wordsto entries are used in lexicography projects, bilingual and multilingual dictionaries, language documentation, and natural language processing pipelines for parsing, morphological analysis, and machine translation. They support batch processing, versioning, and incremental updates, promoting reusability across tools and platforms.

Relation to other concepts: Wordstos are related to, but distinct from, traditional dictionaries, WordNet-style networks, and lexical ontologies. They aim to complement these resources by providing a flexible, interoperable data unit that can be aggregated into larger lexical databases.

See also: lexicon, WordNet, bilingual dictionary, lexical ontology, corpus linguistics.