WordNet, EuroWordNet and Global WordNet

1 WordNet In 1978, George Miller started the development of a database with conceptual relations, as an implementation of a model of the mental lexicon. The database, called WordNet, was organized around the notion of a synset between which semantic relations are expressed. A synset is a set of words with the same part-of-speech that can be interchanged in a certain context. For example, {car; auto; automobile; machine; motorcar} form a synset because they can be used to refer to the same concept. A synset is often further described by a gloss: "4-wheeled; usually propelled by an internal combustion engine". Finally, synsets can be related to each other by semantic relations, such as hyponymy (between specific and more general concepts), meronymy (between parts and wholes), cause, etc. as is illustrated in Figure 1.