-Spell Checking Oriented Word Lists (SCOWL)
-Revision 7.1 (SVN Revision 161)
-January 6, 2011
-by Kevin Atkinson (kevina@gnu.org)
-
-The SCOWL is a collection of word lists split up in various sizes, and
-other categories, intended to be suitable for use in spell checkers.
-However, I am sure it will have numerous other uses as well.
-
-The latest version can be found at http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/.
-
-The directory final/ contains the actual word lists broken up into
-various sizes and categories. The r/ directory contains Readmes from
-the various sources used to create this package.
-
-The misc/ contains a small list of taboo words, see the README file
-for more info. The speller/ directory contains scripts for creating
-spelling dictionaries for Aspell and Hunspell.
-
-The other directories contain the necessary information to recreate the
-word lists from the raw data. Unless you are interested in improving the
-words lists you should not need to worry about what's here. See the
-section on recreating the words lists for more information on what's
-there.
-
-Except for the special word lists the files follow the following
-naming convention:
- <spelling category>-<sub-category>.<size>
-Where the spelling category is one of
- english, american, british, british_z, canadian,
- variant_0, varaint_1, variant_2,
- british_variant_0, british_variant_1,
- canadian_variant_0, canadian_variant_1,
-Sub-category is one of
- abbreviations, contractions, proper-names, upper, words
-And size is one of
- 10, 20, 35 (small), 40, 50 (medium), 55, 60, 70 (large),
- 80 (huge), 95 (insane)
-The special word lists follow are in the following format:
- special-<description>.<size>
-Where description is one of:
- roman-numerals, hacker
-
-The perl script "mk-list" can be used to create a word list of the
-desired size, it usage is:
- ./mk-list [-f] [-v#] <spelling categories> <size>
-where <spelling categories> is one of the above spelling categories
-(the english and special categories are automatically included as well
-as all sub-categories) and <size> is the desired desired size. The
-"-v" option can be used to used to also include the appropriate
-variants file up to level '#'. The normal output will be a sorted
-word list. If you rather see what files will be included, use the
-"-f" option.
-
-When manually combining the words lists the "english" spelling
-category should be used as well as one of "american", "british",
-"british_z" (british with ize spelling), or "canadian". Great care
-has been taken so that that only one spelling for any particular word
-is included in the main list (with some minor exceptions). When two
-variants were considered equal I randomly picked one for inclusion in
-the main word list. Unfortunately this means that my choice in how to
-spell a word may not match your choice. If this is the case you can
-try including one of the "variant_0" spelling categories which
-includes most variants which are considered almost equal. The
-"variant_0" spelling category corresponds mostly to American variants,
-while the "british_variant_0" and "canadian_variant_0" are for British
-and Canadian variants, respectively. The "variant_1" spelling
-categories include variants which are also generally considered
-acceptable, and "variant_2" contains variants which are seldom used
-and may now even be considered correct. There is no
-"british_variant_2" or "canadian_variant_2" spelling category since
-the distinction would be almost meaningless.
-
-The "abbreviation" category includes abbreviations and acronyms which
-are not also normal words. The "contractions" category should be self
-explanatory. The "upper" category includes upper case words and proper
-names which are common enough to appear in a typical dictionary. The
-"proper-names" category included all the additional uppercase words.
-Final the "words" category contains all the normal English words.
-
-To give you an idea of what the words in the various sizes look like
-here is a sample of 25 random words found only in that size:
-
-10: advertised agreeing artificial bucket changes closest currently finding
- implications learning liable obvious partial peace planet preparing
- produced regulations shortly tries under unnecessary vacations vast wind
-
-20: accomplishes addict baffles blink chapel corrections depresses dripping
- erased infant interfere launch nicking novels paranoid passport pursued
- recruitment rectifying relaxed sixteen sundry tab undergone withdraws
-
-35: adores affixes brisks caking conciliates decimates discretionary
- dispatches forensics glorify gridiron healed hurling kelp massacring
- necks pits placarding pyramids ratting recreates renovated sandals shirks
- subtract
-
-40: demoed dichotomy dilapidation disheveled ebullience estimable finagling
- hemorrhoid lazily medalists mintiest motherboards ostracism pornographers
- predilections remarries southbound steamrolled sympathizers tads tampons
- tattletale upchucked vainly viscous
-
-50: bootless brawler bulkhead canoeist declassifying farthings hake hectors
- helpmate hermitage humanoid kitsch mercerize pawnshops pleasingly
- retrorockets scurrilously solemnizes superficiality symbiosis tangelo
- timetabling unenviable unmoral unreconstructed
-
-55: beachfront bicarbonate caff campanologists execrably fab fightback
- firebricks insipidity laboriousness megawatts mirthlessly misnames
- nymphos photocell potholed psychoactive psychoanalytically schoolmarmish
- simulacra subeditors supremo sweated turbocharges yogic
-
-60: assayer banteringly besmeared brazer chromatin cremes deciliters
- doubtfulness enshrinement ephemerally fibular globalist gypper
- legitimatized mensch mopers oversea pantyliner paratyphoid redivide
- rehabilitative salesladies sensualists superposition univalves
-
-70: adactylous anticapitalist bezant bister boraginaceous civically cossacks
- cousinly curricle dekaliter grippingly grugrus gurging hermaphroditism
- levanted magnetizer nonapplicable panegyrists parametrize radomes
- refilter ruinations teths truistic uts
-
-80: bodikin buhrs covetiveness diarch disaccharidases drumbeater empusas
- flyings hyperexcitability hyperpolarizations janizaries overwash
- physiocrats postform postsecondary preambulate puzzlehead remixer
- snoutier tetrathlons toothdrawing triff unaffectionate wearish yawy
-
-95: actinophone aerobious anadenia biochemics chromatopathia ciclatouns
- gaspiest guapinol hagigah interdorsal melanotekite minnicking
- nonretrenchment overloftily oystriges peltandra retromaxillary
- subterraqueous transphysically unconfidential unvalidating upspew
- verminlike vetiveria yerth
-
-And here is a count on the number of in each spelling category
-(american + english spelling category):
-
- Size Words Names Running Total %
- 10 4,427 15 4,442 0.7
- 20 8,122 0 12,564 1.9
- 35 37,251 224 50,039 7.7
- 40 6,802 503 57,344 8.8
- 50 24,505 15,455 97,304 14.9
- 55 6,555 0 103,859 15.9
- 60 13,633 775 118,267 18.1
- 70 35,507 7,747 161,521 24.8
- 80 143,791 33,293 338,605 51.9
- 95 227,056 86,814 652,475 100.0
-
-(The "Words" column does not include the name count.)
-
-Size 35 is the recommended small size, 50 the medium and 70 the large.
-For spell checking I recommend using 60. Sizes 70 and below contain
-words found in most dictionaries while the 80 size contains all the
-strange and unusual words people like to use in word games such as
-Scrabble (TM). While a lot of the the words in the 80 size are not
-used very often, they are all generally considered valid words in the
-English language. The 95 contains just about every English word in
-existence and then some. Many of the words at the 95 level will
-probably not be considered valid English words by most people. I use
-the 60 size for the English dictionary for Aspell, and I don't
-recommend anyone use levels above 70 for spell checking. Levels above
-70 contain rarely used words which can hide misspellings of similar
-more commonly used words. For example the word "ort" can hide a
-common typo of "or". No one should need to use a size larger than 80,
-the 95 size is labeled insane for a reason.
-
-Accents are present on certain words such as café in iso8859-1 format.
-
-CHANGES:
-
-From Revision 7 to 7.1 (January 6, 2011)
-
- Updated to revision 5.1 of Varcon which corrected several errors.
-
- Fixed various problems with the variant processing which corrected a
- few more errors.
-
- Added several now common proper names and some other words now
- in common use.
-
- Include misc/ and speller/ directory which where in SVN but left
- out of the release tarball.
-
- Other minor fixes, including some fixes to the taboo word lists.
-
-From Revision 6 to 7 (December 27, 2010)
-
- Updated to revision 5.0 of Varcon which corrected many errors,
- especially in the British and Canadian spelling categories. Also
- added new spelling categories for the British and Canadian spelling
- variants and separated them out from the main variant_* categories.
-
- Moved Moby names lists (3897male.nam 4946fema.len 21986na.mes) to 95
- level since they contain too many errors and rare names.
-
- Moved frequently class 0 from Brian Kelk's Wordlist from
- level 60 to 70, and also filter it with level 80 due to, too many
- misspellings.
-
- Many other minor fixes.
-
-From Revision 5 to 6 (August 10, 2004)
-
- Updated to version 4.0 of the 12dicts package.
-
- Included the 3esl, 2of4brif, and 5desk list from the new 12dicts
- package. The 3esl was included in the 40 size, the 2of4brif in the
- 55 size and the 5desk in the 70 size.
-
- Removed the Ispell word list as it was a source of too many errors.
- This eliminated the 65 size.
-
- Removed clause 4 from the Ispell copyright with permission of Geoff
- Kuenning.
-
- Updated to version 4.1 of VarCon.
-
- Added the "british_z" spelling category which it British using the
- "ize" spelling.
-
-From Revision 4a to 5 (January 3, 2002)
-
- Added variants that were not really spelling variants (such as
- forwards) back into the main list.
-
- Fixed a bug which caused variants of words to incorrectly appear in
- the non-variant lists.
-
- Moved rarely used inflections of a word into higher number lists.
-
- Added other inflections of a words based on the following criteria
- If the word is in the base form: only include that word.
- If the word is in a plural form: include the base word and the plural
- If the word is a verb form (other than plural): include all verb forms
- If the word is an ad* form: include all ad* forms
- If the word is in a possessive form: also include the non-possessive
-
- Updated to the latest version of many of the source dictionaries.
-
- Removed the DEC Word List due to the questionable licence and
- because removing it will not seriously decrease the quality of SCOWL
- (there are a few less proper names).
-
-From Revision 4 to 4a (April 4, 2001)
-
- Reran the scripts on a never version of AGID (3a) which fixes a bug
- which caused some common words to be improperly marked as variants.
-
-From Revision 3 to 4 (January 28, 2001)
-
- Split the variant "spelling category" up into 3 different levels.
-
- Added words in the Ispell word list at the 65 level.
-
- Other changes due to using more recent versions of various sources
- included a more accurate version of AGID thanks to the word of
- Alan Beale
-
-From Revision 2 to 3 (August 18, 2000)
-
- Renamed special-unix-terms to special-hacker and added a large
- number of commonly used words within the hacker (not cracker)
- community.
-
- Added a couple more signature words including "newbie".
-
- Minor changes due to changes in the inflection database.
-
-From Revision 1 to 2 (August 5, 2000)
-
- Moved the male and female name lists from the mwords package and the
- DEC name lists form the 50 level to the 60 level and moved Alan's
- name list from the 60 level to the 50 level. Also added the top
- 1000 male, female, and last names from the 1990 Census report to the
- 50 level. This reduced the number of names in the 50 level from
- 17,000 to 7,000.
-
- Added a large number of Uppercase words to the 50 level.
-
- Properly accented the possessive form of some words.
-
- Minor other changes due to changes in my raw data files which have
- not been released yet. Email if you are interested in these files.
-
-COPYRIGHT, SOURCES, and CREDITS:
-
-The collective work is Copyright 2000-2011 by Kevin Atkinson as well
-as any of the copyrights mentioned below:
-
- Copyright 2000-2011 by Kevin Atkinson
-
- Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell these word
- lists, the associated scripts, the output created from the scripts,
- and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee,
- provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and
- that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in
- supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations
- about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided
- "as is" without express or implied warranty.
-
-Alan Beale <biljir@pobox.com> also deserves special credit as he has,
-in addition to providing the 12Dicts package and being a major
-contributor to the ENABLE word list, given me an incredible amount of
-feedback and created a number of special lists (those found in the
-Supplement) in order to help improve the overall quality of SCOWL.
-
-The 10 level includes the 1000 most common English words (according to
-the Moby (TM) Words II [MWords] package), a subset of the 1000 most
-common words on the Internet (again, according to Moby Words II), and
-frequently class 16 from Brian Kelk's "UK English Wordlist
-with Frequency Classification".
-
-The MWords package was explicitly placed in the public domain:
-
- The Moby lexicon project is complete and has
- been place into the public domain. Use, sell,
- rework, excerpt and use in any way on any platform.
-
- Placing this material on internal or public servers is
- also encouraged. The compiler is not aware of any
- export restrictions so freely distribute world-wide.
-
- You can verify the public domain status by contacting
-
- Grady Ward
- 3449 Martha Ct.
- Arcata, CA 95521-4884
-
- grady@netcom.com
- grady@northcoast.com
-
-The "UK English Wordlist With Frequency Classification" is also in the
-Public Domain:
-
- Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2000 20:27:21 +0100
- From: Brian Kelk <Brian.Kelk@cl.cam.ac.uk>
-
- > I was wondering what the copyright status of your "UK English
- > Wordlist With Frequency Classification" word list as it seems to
- > be lacking any copyright notice.
-
- There were many many sources in total, but any text marked
- "copyright" was avoided. Locally-written documentation was one
- source. An earlier version of the list resided in a filespace called
- PUBLIC on the University mainframe, because it was considered public
- domain.
-
- Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 19:31:34 +0100
-
- > So are you saying your word list is also in the public domain?
-
- That is the intention.
-
-The 20 level includes frequency classes 7-15 from Brian's word list.
-
-The 35 level includes frequency classes 2-6 and words appearing in at
-least 11 of 12 dictionaries as indicated in the 12Dicts package. All
-words from the 12Dicts package have had likely inflections added via
-my inflection database.
-
-The 12Dicts package and Supplement is in the Public Domain.
-
-The WordNet database, which was used in the creation of the
-Inflections database, is under the following copyright:
-
- This software and database is being provided to you, the LICENSEE,
- by Princeton University 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 and distribute this software and
- database 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 that you make
- for internal use or for distribution.
-
- WordNet 1.6 Copyright 1997 by Princeton University. All rights
- reserved.
-
- THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND PRINCETON
- UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
- IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, PRINCETON
- UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT-
- ABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR 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 Princeton University or Princeton may not be used in
- advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software
- and/or database. Title to copyright in this software, database and
- any associated documentation shall at all times remain with
- Princeton University and LICENSEE agrees to preserve same.
-
-The 40 level includes words from Alan's 3esl list found in version 4.0
-of his 12dicts package. Like his other stuff the 3esl list is also in the
-public domain.
-
-The 50 level includes Brian's frequency class 1, words words appearing
-in at least 5 of 12 of the dictionaries as indicated in the 12Dicts
-package, and uppercase words in at least 4 of the previous 12
-dictionaries. A decent number of proper names is also included: The
-top 1000 male, female, and Last names from the 1990 Census report; a
-list of names sent to me by Alan Beale; and a few names that I added
-myself. Finally a small list of abbreviations not commonly found in
-other word lists is included.
-
-The name files form the Census report is a government document which I
-don't think can be copyrighted.
-
-The file special-jargon.50 uses common.lst and word.lst from the
-"Unofficial Jargon File Word Lists" which is derived from "The Jargon
-File". All of which is in the Public Domain. This file also contain
-a few extra UNIX terms which are found in the file "unix-terms" in the
-special/ directory.
-
-The 55 level includes words from Alan's 2of4brif list found in version
-4.0 of his 12dicts package. Like his other stuff the 2of4brif is also
-in the public domain.
-
-The 60 level includes all words appearing in at least 2 of the 12
-dictionaries as indicated by the 12Dicts package.
-
-The 70 level includes Brian's frequency class 0 and the 74,550 common
-dictionary words from the MWords package. The common dictionary words,
-like those from the 12Dicts package, have had all likely inflections
-added. The 70 level also included the 5desk list from version 4.0 of
-the 12Dics package which is the public domain.
-
-The 80 level includes the ENABLE word list, all the lists in the
-ENABLE supplement package (except for ABLE), the "UK Advanced Cryptics
-Dictionary" (UKACD), the list of signature words in from YAWL package,
-and the 10,196 places list from the MWords package.
-
-The ENABLE package, mainted by M\Cooper <thegrendel@theriver.com>,
-is in the Public Domain:
-
- The ENABLE master word list, WORD.LST, is herewith formally released
- into the Public Domain. Anyone is free to use it or distribute it in
- any manner they see fit. No fee or registration is required for its
- use nor are "contributions" solicited (if you feel you absolutely
- must contribute something for your own peace of mind, the authors of
- the ENABLE list ask that you make a donation on their behalf to your
- favorite charity). This word list is our gift to the Scrabble
- community, as an alternate to "official" word lists. Game designers
- may feel free to incorporate the WORD.LST into their games. Please
- mention the source and credit us as originators of the list. Note
- that if you, as a game designer, use the WORD.LST in your product,
- you may still copyright and protect your product, but you may *not*
- legally copyright or in any way restrict redistribution of the
- WORD.LST portion of your product. This *may* under law restrict your
- rights to restrict your users' rights, but that is only fair.
-
-UKACD, by J Ross Beresford <ross@bryson.demon.co.uk>, is under the
-following copyright:
-
- Copyright (c) J Ross Beresford 1993-1999. All Rights Reserved.
-
- The following restriction is placed on the use of this publication:
- if The UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary is used in a software package
- or redistributed in any form, the copyright notice must be
- prominently displayed and the text of this document must be included
- verbatim.
-
- There are no other restrictions: I would like to see the list
- distributed as widely as possible.
-
-The 95 level includes the 354,984 single words, 256,772 compound
-words, 4,946 female names and the 3,897 male names, and 21,986 names
-from the MWords package, ABLE.LST from the ENABLE Supplement, and some
-additional words found in my part-of-speech database that were not
-found anywhere else.
-
-Accent information was taken from UKACD.
-
-My VARCON package was used to create the American, British, and
-Canadian word list.
-
-Since the original word lists used used in the VARCON package came
-from the Ispell distribution they are under the Ispell copyright:
-
- Copyright 1993, Geoff Kuenning, Granada Hills, CA
- All rights reserved.
-
- Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
- modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
- are met:
-
- 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
- notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
- notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
- documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- 3. All modifications to the source code must be clearly marked as
- such. Binary redistributions based on modified source code
- must be clearly marked as modified versions in the documentation
- and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- (clause 4 removed with permission from Geoff Kuenning)
- 5. The name of Geoff Kuenning may not be used to endorse or promote
- products derived from this software without specific prior
- written permission.
-
- THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY GEOFF KUENNING AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS
- IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
- LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
- FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL GEOFF
- KUENNING OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
- INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
- BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
- LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
- CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
- LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN
- ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
- POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
-
-The variant word lists were created from a list of variants found in
-the 12dicts supplement package as well as a list of variants I created
-myself.
-
-The Readmes for the various packages used can be found in the
-appropriate directory under the r/ directory.
-
-FUTURE PLANS:
-
-The process of "sort"s, "comm"s, and Perl scripts to combine the many
-word lists and separate out the variant information is inexact and
-error prone. The whole things needs to be rewritten to deal with
-words in terms of lemmas. When the exact lemma is not known a best
-guess should be made. I'm not sure what form this should be in. I
-originally thought this should be some sort of database, but maybe I
-should just slurp all that data into memory and process it in one
-giant perl script. With the amount of memory available these days (at
-least 2 GB, often 4 GB or more) this should not really be a problem.
-
-In addition, there is a very nice frequency analyze of the BNC corpus
-done by Adam Kilgarriff. Unlike Brain's word lists the BNC lists
-include part of speech information. I plan on somehow using these
-lists as Adam Kilgarriff has given me the OK to use it in SCOWL.
-These lists will greatly reduce the problem of inflected forms of a
-word appearing at different levels due to the part-of-speech
-information.
-
-There is frequency information for some other corpus such as COCA
-(Corpus of Contemporary American English) and ANS (American National
-Corpus) which I might also be able to use. The formal will require
-permission, and the latter is of questionable quality.
-
-RECREATING THE WORD LISTS:
-
-In order to recreate the word lists you need a modern version of Perl,
-bash, the traditional set of shell utilities, a system that supports
-symbolic links, and quite possibly GNU Make. The easiest way to
-recreate the word lists is to checkout SVN revision 161 (or tag
-scowl-7.1) and simply type "make" (see http://wordlist.sourceforge.net).
-You can try to download all the pieces manually, but you may not get
-the same result since the latest version of some parts used to create
-SCOWL may not have been released yet.
-
-The src/ directory contains the numerous scripts used in the creation
-of the final product.
-
-The r/ directory contains the raw data used to create the final
-product. If you checkout from SVN this directory should be populated
-automatically for you. If you insist on doing it the hard way see the
-README file in the r/ directory for more information.
-
-The l/ directory contains symbolic links used by the actual scripts.
-
-Finally, the working/ directory is where all the intermittent files go
-that are not specific to one source.