discover the etymology of words
Project description
Intro
Recently, @jmsv and @parker57 started a side project to analyse etymologies of text written by various historical authors, expecting there to already be a library for retrieving etymological data. On discovering that this wasn't the case, ety was created!
There isn't a single source of truth for etymologies; words' origins can be heavily disputed. This package's source data, Gerard de Melo's Etymological Wordnet, is mostly mined from Wiktionary. Since this is a collaboratively edited dictionary, its data could be seen as the closest we can get to a public consensus.
Install
pip
pip install ety
Development
In a virtual environment - Pipenv is recommended:
python setup.py install
Usage
Module
>>> import ety >>> ety.origins("potato") [Word(batata, language=Taino)] >>> ety.origins("drink", recursive=True) [Word(drync, language=Old English (ca. 450-1100)), Word(drinken, language=Middle English (1100-1500)), Word(drincan, language=Old English (ca. 450-1100))] >>> print(ety.tree("aerodynamically")) aerodynamically (English) ├── -ally (English) └── aerodynamic (English) ├── aero- (English) │ └── ἀήρ (Ancient Greek (to 1453)) └── dynamic (English) └── dynamique (French) └── δυναμικός (Ancient Greek (to 1453)) └── δύναμις (Ancient Greek (to 1453)) └── δύναμαι (Ancient Greek (to 1453))
CLI
After installing, a command-line tool is also available. ety -h
outputs the following help text describing arguments:
usage: ety [-h] [-r] [-t] words [words ...]
positional arguments:
words the search word(s)
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-r, --recursive search origins recursively
-t, --tree display etymology tree
Examples
$ ety drink drink # List direct origins • drync (Old English (ca. 450-1100)) • drinken (Middle English (1100-1500)) $ ety drink -r # Recursive search drink • drync (Old English (ca. 450-1100)) • drinken (Middle English (1100-1500)) • drincan (Old English (ca. 450-1100)) $ ety drink -t # Etymology tree drink (English) ├── drinken (Middle English (1100-1500)) │ └── drincan (Old English (ca. 450-1100)) └── drync (Old English (ca. 450-1100))
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