wn
Command line interface to the WordNet lexical database
TLDR
Look up synonyms of a noun
SYNOPSIS
wn searchstr [-h] [-g] [-a] [-l] [-o] [-s] [-n#] searchoption ..._
DESCRIPTION
wn provides a command-line interface to the WordNet lexical database, displaying synsets (sets of synonyms) and semantic relations as formatted text. For each word, different searches are available based on syntactic category (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and relation type.
Search options end with a letter indicating the part of speech: n for nouns, v for verbs, a for adjectives, r for adverbs. Multiple searches can be combined in a single command.
The tool automatically performs morphological analysis, so inflected forms (e.g., "running") are resolved to their base form.
PARAMETERS
-g
Show textual glosses (definitions)-s
Show sense numbers in output-o
Display synset offset numbers-a
Show all synsets related to the search string-n #
Restrict results to a specific sense number-h
Display help text-l
Display license and copyright information
SEARCH OPTIONS
-syns(n|v|a|r)
Display synonyms and immediate hypernyms of matching synsets-ants(n|v|a|r)
Display direct antonyms (opposites)-hype(n|v)
Recursively display the hypernym tree (broader categories)-hypo(n|v)
Display immediate hyponyms (narrower categories)-tree(n|v)
Display the subordinate hierarchy tree-deri(n|v)
Show morphologically related word forms-over
Display an overview of all senses across all parts of speech-grep(n|v|a|r)
List compound words containing the search string-simsv
Group verb senses by similarity of meaning
CAVEATS
WordNet's last official Princeton release was in 2011, so coverage of newer vocabulary is limited. The database is English-only. Results are ordered by frequency of use, which may not reflect specialized domain usage.
HISTORY
WordNet was created in 1985 at Princeton University's Cognitive Science Laboratory under the direction of psychologist George Armitage Miller. Later directed by Christiane Fellbaum, the project received the 2006 Antonio Zampolli Prize. Initially funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and later by DARPA and NSF.