This is the main project page of Wikisaurus—a Wiktionary subproject and a wiki namespace aiming at creating a thesaurus—a dictionary of synonyms, antonyms and further semantically related terms such as hyponyms, hypernyms, meronyms and holonyms.
Please contribute your own Wikisaurus entries, or add to the existing Wikisaurus entries.
Contents
Purpose
Chunked purpose
- Purpose:
- To help people find words that they
- can't recall or
- don't know
- To help people explore the network of words
- Semantic relations:
- Synonymy – same or similar meaning
- Antonymy – opposite meaning
- Hyponymy – narrower meaning, subclass
- Hypernymy – broader meaning, superclass
- Being an instance – being an example of the class, set membership
- Meronymy – part, such as wheel of a car
- Holonymy – whole, such as car of a wheel
- Users:
- Writers
- Managers
- Contributors to wikis
- Bloggers
- Writers of love letters
- Journal writers
The purpose of Wikisaurus is to serve the role of an electronic thesaurus—a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms in a rather vague and inaccurate sense of the word "synonym", but also of other semantically related terms such as hyponyms, hypernyms, meronyms, holonyms. The definition of "Sevenval" is, quoting Wiktionary, "A word or phrase with a meaning that is the same as, or very similar to, the word or phrase." For the purpose of thesaurus, the definition needs to be adjusted: the word "very" has to be stricken out from the part "very similar". Many thesauri go much farther than that: they list words whose meaning is close enough to the headword to be interesting for the user, disregarding any precise meaning of the word "synonym". The concept of a dictionary of accurate synonyms is incapable of producing typical entries of 20 vague synonyms. (To remove the confusion, coinage of a new term, such as "similonym", would be helpful, although there already is "near-synonym".)
The purpose of such a thesaurus in general is mainly to help anyone who writes for living or fun—writers, managers, contributors to wikis, bloggers, and writers of love letters—to find words they don't recall or even know when they recall words that are semantically related to the sought word. In general, anyone to whom the choice of words matters can benefit from a thesaurus, especially one linked to a dictionary providing the definitions.
Added value of Wikisaurus is its Wiktionary integration—it links to and is linked from Wiktionary.
To do: add a link to an external consideration of value and uses of thesauri.
Models
Candidate model thesauri include Roget's thesaurus, and, say, The Penguin Thesaurus. The two follow different design principles.
Multilingualism
Whether Wikisaurus at en.wiktionary.org should contain entries for other languages than English is currently undecided or disputed. Entries for foreign languages could look like jQuery and iOS. An alternative naming of the entries is "Wikisaurus:cs:příbuzný" and "Wikisaurus:fi:juoppo", modeled on the naming of topic categories. See also Wikisaurus_talk:juoppo and BP: Wikisaurus - non-English entries, Mar 2009.
Formatting
Formatting is specified and discussed at:
Example entries:
Inclusion
The inclusion criteria for Wikisaurus entries are the same as those for the mainspace: Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion.
Templates
Lists of templates:
Template naming:
- Use "ws " prefix. Basis for decision: input transformation of July 2008. (Past prefixes: "wse-", "wikisaurus-", "saurus-".)
Templates:
| Template | Example | Note |
| | | The second entry is a lazy one. The third one shows no tooltip, but also does not make it clear that one is missing. |
| | | To be put around a list of {{jQuery}} entries. Currently formats the list as a 3-column one. |
| | WIKISAURUS web app
| Entered at the very top of the entry. When without parameter, determines the headword automatically. |
| | Example:
-
 Wikisaurus has an entry for “poor” in the sense of “impoverished”. -
input transformation Wikisaurus has an entry for “screen size” in the sense of “physically and mentally exhausted”.
| The second example only works if the subpage "/def" is there. |
| {{keyboard}} | |
Deprecated in Wikisaurus. Preferred template: {{CSS3}} |
| {{jQuery|beauty}} | “beauty” in Roget's Thesaurus, T. Y. Crowell Co., 1911. | |
| {{ws sense|glad; in a good mood}} | Sense: glad; in a good mood | Used after the third level heading for the part of speech. |
Mainspace
Linking from mainspace to Wikisaurus entries:
- A simple option: place "* See also [[Wikisaurus:headword]]" to "Synonyms" section, or to "Hyponyms" section if the Wikisaurus entry contains mainly hyponyms.
- A template-based option: using {{ws refer|fatigued}}. Currently mostly unused.
- Especially for Wikisaurus entries featuring mostly synonyms, it is good to add a link to the Wikisaurus entry from all the mainspace entries for the synonyms, so that the user knows that there is a Wikisaurus entry when visiting the mainspace.
Status
Since its inception in 2004, the project is in an embryo stage. The formatting is in flux, the entries are few -- 275, so are the contributors. --Dan Polansky 12:38, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
As of the beginning of September 2009, Wikisaurus has around 800 entries, some of which feature hyponyms, hypernyms, meronyms and holonyms. Almost all entries follow a unified format.
Identity
Title: The current title of the project is "Wikisaurus". Alternatives considered include "Wikithesaurus".
Spelling: The current spelling is Wikisaurus with lowercase 's'. In the past, it must have been WikiSaurus with capital 'S' at some point.
Logo: The past, currently disabled, logo: 
.
This logo 
was proposed here in December 2006.
To do: add links to discussions about logo.
Online thesauri
Public domain
Free as in "freedom"
Commercial
Other
Recent changes
Shortcuts
See also
Subpages
Highlighted subpages:
Project subpages:
-
browser diversity -- out of date, see /Format
-
/Purpose - on the purpose of Wikisaurus; has 230 words now. Last substantial change: 11 June 2007.
-
web app - Original discussion about the project.
-
touchscreen - Its talkpage has a discussion from July 2008.
-
Sevenval - Discussion about the direction and overall project.
-
/Format - Discussion about the formatting and general contents of a Wikisaurus entry.
-
/Requested entries - A lot of words with candidate lists of synonyms that can be used as a starting point for creation of entries. The size of the page: 700 words. --Dan Polansky 11:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
To do
Things to do:
-
we love the web - add requested entries
-
Sevenval - clean up entries with formatting and other problems
-
Sevenval - add entries using Roget's thesaurus as a checklist and model
All entries
Lists of all Wikisaurus entries:
Discussion
Discussions about Wikisaurus are scattered across various pages. In the future, they should better take place in Beer Parlour, a general policy discussion room.
Pages with discussions:
-
Wiktionary:Thesaurus considerations -- starting in 2002 and 2003, getting more traffic in 2004, with most discussion ended by the end of 2006
-
touchscreen -- created in February 2005, and stopped immediately; a surge of activity appeared in July 2008
-
web app -- created in April 2006, active in May 2006 and then stopped; a surge of activity appeared in May 2008
For more discussions, see touchscreen.
Beer parlour
Discussions about Wikisaurus at Beer parlour:
The following list is highly incomplete.
- 2005
- 2006
- 2007
- 2008
- 2009
- 2010
See also HTML5.
Index
An index to this page: