12.2.12 Getting Definitions, Synonyms and Antonyms from WordNet

Getting Definitions

In [1]:
from textblob import Word
In [2]:
happy = Word('happy')
  • Word class’s definitions property returns a list of all the word’s definitions in the WordNet database
In [3]:
happy.definitions
Out[3]:
['enjoying or showing or marked by joy or pleasure',
 'marked by good fortune',
 'eagerly disposed to act or to be of service',
 'well expressed and to the point']
  • Database does not necessarily contain every dictionary definition
  • define method that enables you to pass a part of speech as an argument so you can get definitions matching only that part of speech

Getting Synonyms

  • synsets are sets of synonyms
In [4]:
happy.synsets
Out[4]:
[Synset('happy.a.01'),
 Synset('felicitous.s.02'),
 Synset('glad.s.02'),
 Synset('happy.s.04')]
  • Synset — a group of synonyms
  • happy.a.01:
    • happy is the original Word’s lemmatized form
    • a is the part of speech — a for adjective, n for noun, v for verb, r for adverb or s for adjective satellite.
      • Many adjective synsets have satellite synsets representing similar adjectives
    • 01 is the index number of the corresponding meaning in the WordNet database
  • Method get_synsets enables you to pass a part of speech to can get Synsets for that part of speech
  • Each Synset has a lemmas method that returns a list of Lemma objects representing the synonyms
  • A Lemma’s name method returns the synonymous word as a string
In [5]:
synonyms = set()
In [6]:
for synset in happy.synsets:
    for lemma in synset.lemmas():
        synonyms.add(lemma.name())
In [7]:
synonyms
Out[7]:
{'felicitous', 'glad', 'happy', 'well-chosen'}

Getting Antonyms

  • If the word represented by a Lemma has antonyms in the WordNet database, invoking the Lemma’s antonyms method returns a list of Lemmas representing the antonyms
In [8]:
lemmas = happy.synsets[0].lemmas()
In [9]:
lemmas
Out[9]:
[Lemma('happy.a.01.happy')]
  • Check whether the database has any corresponding antonyms for that Lemma
In [10]:
lemmas[0].antonyms()
Out[10]:
[Lemma('unhappy.a.01.unhappy')]

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