What is Słowosieć?
Słowosieć is a Polish wordnet. In short, it can be said that it is, on one hand: a modern dictionary of the Polish language, and on the other: a database providing a description of vocabulary for the purposes of automatic natural language processing.
modern, extensive dictionarywith a network structure new standard of
vocabulary description conceptual resource
model of a given language digital publication that
can be continuously improved multidisciplinary and
detailed ontology lexical-semantic
database description of vocabulary
useful for automatic language
processing tools
In wordnets, individual meanings of words are connected by relations describing the links and dependencies between them. The assumption is that through mutual references and through the position occupied in the resulting network of relations, words are supposed to 'define themselves', providing both people using such a dictionary, as well as computer programs working on it, with useful information about meanings.
What kind of relations are these? For example: well-known to dictionary users - synonymy and antonymy, as well as hyponymy (allowing to connect a more precise term with its other, more general name, as in the pair car - vehicle), which - paired with the opposite hypernymy - is one of the most important building blocks of the wordnet network. There are currently exactly 100 types of relations used in Słowosieć. Today, however, it also includes glosses reminiscent of entries from traditional dictionaries. More on what exactly Słowosieć consists of in the section 'How to read Słowosieć?'.
It can be used in programs that utilize elements of automatic language processing
As a modern dictionary, it can be helpful for anyone seeking advice in the field of vocabulary and for every linguistics enthusiast
Enables the performance of research on linguistic material - especially quantitative
In 2022, Słowosieć contained 190 thousand lemmas (but only: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), nearly 300 thousand meanings and over 700 thousand relations between words. It is currently the largest wordnet in the world, even larger than its original - the American Princeton WordNet. It is also the largest dictionary of the Polish language.
Słowosieć is also connected by relations with the Princeton WordNet. For this description, a set of special interlanguage relations (36 types) are used, such as interlanguage synonymy (cat - kot) or interlanguage hyponymy (mushroom soup - zupa grzybowa). The Słowosieć page also presents the Princeton WordNet resource along with information about Polish-English relations, which allows Słowosieć to also serve as a Polish-English and English-Polish dictionary.
dictionary of near-synonyms Polish language dictionary thematic dictionaries dictionary of archaisms dictionary of environmental
and regional variations of Polish dictionary of new words lexicons with terminology of many fields relational dictionary nest dictionary axiological dictionary dictionary of reminders encyclopedic dictionary dictionary of idioms Polish-English
and English-Polish dictionary
More Facts about the Development of Słowosieć
Słowosieć is a key resource in computational language processing and artificial intelligence research, including its application in automatic translations like Google Translate. Some of the data is also shared through the Open Multilingual WordNet platform, which brings together 34 wordnets for various languages of the world, available under an open license and interconnected through mapping to the Princeton WordNet.
large-scale quantitative analysis
on linguistic material text generation and transformation multilingual analyses automatic text analysis supporting psycholinguistic research aiding diagnosis and treatment of aphasia chatbot construction sentiment analysis WSD - word sense disambiguation stylometric studies supporting foreign language teaching machine translation device programming
Examples of Słowosieć Usage
The Polish WordNet is being developed through the combined efforts of lexicographers and IT specialists from the Language Technology Group at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. By decision of the university authorities, Słowosieć is available free of charge for public (including commercial) use based on a license modeled after the Princeton WordNet license. Users can browse Słowosieć through a mobile application and WordNetLoom-Viewer (an application that allows viewing the visualized network of Słowosieć meanings as a graph), as well as download source files. Programmers also have access to Słowosieć at the web service level and through an API.
Work on Słowosieć is carried out thanks to grants from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and EU Funds, and currently - within the pan-European scientific infrastructure CLARIN and the Polish consortium CLARIN-PL.
License
plWordNet® is unencumbered, and may be used in commercial applications in accordance with the following license agreement. An attorney representing the commercial interest should review this plWordNet license with respect to the intended use. plWordNet License
This license is available as the file LICENSE in any downloaded version of plWordNet.
This software and database are being provided to you, the LICENSEE, by Wrocław University of Technology under the following license. By obtaining, using and/or copying this software and database, you agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with these terms and conditions: permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and public expose this software and database (including data getting) and its documentation for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you agree to comply with the following copyright notice and statements, including the disclaimer, and that the same appear on ALL copies of the software, database and documentation, including modifications which you make for internal use or for wider distribution.
plWordNet 4.2 © 2020 by Wrocław University of Technology. All rights reserved.
THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND WROCŁAW UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, WROCŁAW UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT-ABILITY OR MERCHANT-FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE; NOR DOES WROCŁAW UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES THAT THE USE OF THE LICENSED SOFTWARE, DATABASE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS.
The name of Wrocław University of Technology may not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software, the database or both. Title to copyright in this software, database and any associated documentation shall at all times remain with Wrocław University of Technology, and LICENSEE agrees to preserve this copyright
Citation
When using the resources of Słowosieci, please include the following bibliographic items:
Słowosieć 5.0
@article{rudnicka2025plwordnet,
title={plWordNet 5.0--challenges of a life-long wordnet development process},
author={Rudnicka, Ewa and Alberski, Bart{\l}omiej and Piasecki, Maciej},
journal={GWC 2025},
pages={162},
year={2025},
url={https://aclanthology.org/anthology-files/anthology-files/pdf/gwc/2025.gwc-proceedings.2025.pdf#page=170}
}Słowosieć 4.1
@article{art-pwr-temp,
author = 'Christiane Fellbaum, Piek Vossen, Ewa Rudnicka, Marek Maziarz, Maciej Piasecki (red.)',
chapter = 'Oficyna Wydawnicza Politechniki Wrocławskiej',
journal = 'Oficyna Wydawnicza Politechniki Wrocławskiej',
title = 'Proceedings of the Tenth Global Wordnet Conference: July 23-27, 2019, Wrocław (Poland) ',
year = '2019',
isbn = '978-83-7493-108-3',
}Older versions
@bookplWNBook{null,
author = 'Maciej Piasecki and Stan Szpakowicz and Bartosz Broda',
publisher = 'Oficyna Wydawnicza Politechniki Wroclawskiej',
title = 'A Wordnet from the Ground Up',
year = '2009',
url = 'http://www.dbc.wroc.pl/Content/4220/Piasecki_Wordnet.pdf',
}Statistics
Summary of Słowosiec statistics
