lexhint

Lexhint is a local lexical-evidence engine backed by self-describing SQLite language databases. It provides lexical membership, optional corpus commonness, compact-string segmentation, semantic-domain evidence, and optional rich dictionary entries.

Lexhint does not normalize or speak text. Word boundaries, acronyms, URLs, numbers, versions, and pronunciation policy belong to the consuming application.

Install

python -m pip install lexhint

Lexhint supports Python 3.10 through 3.14. The Python package contains code only, so install a dataset explicitly after installing the package. Published datasets are maintained separately in the lexhint-datasets repository, with their own licensing and provenance.

Quick start

Install the normal English runtime artifact, inspect it, and query it locally:

python -m pip install lexhint
lexhint dataset download en
lexhint dataset list
lexhint word compiler -l en
lexhint context "The compiler is 8.3.2." -l en --target 16:21
lexhint complete comp -l en

lexhint dataset download is the only networked step. Lexicon, query commands, and dataset inventory commands use installed files and do not silently contact GitHub.

The download default is the runtime variant (lexical,semantic). Optional variants are:

• lexical for membership, frequency, and segmentation;
• runtime for lexical and semantic context evidence;
• dictionary for entries, senses, topics, and rich dictionary rendering without search indexes;
• rich for everything in dictionary, plus fuzzy suggestions and indexed definition/reverse search.

Install several variants side by side:

lexhint dataset download en --variant rich
lexhint dataset list --language en
lexhint dictionary word love -l en --variant rich
lexhint dataset remove en --variant rich

For reproducibility, install and select an exact release:

lexhint dataset download en --variant runtime --version 2026.08.20

The managed store uses LEXHINT_DATA_DIR when set, or the platform data directory otherwise. Artifacts are stored by base language, variant, exact SQLite schema, and dataset version. A local-build alternative is available with lexhint dictionary build; pass its output with --path when querying.

For a small local artifact without FrequencyWords enrichment, build from the repository fixture with lexhint dictionary build en --source tests/fixtures/kaikki-mini.jsonl --output /tmp/lexhint-en.sqlite3 --no-frequency and pass --path /tmp/lexhint-en.sqlite3 to the query commands.

1. Common-word lexicon

Open the highest-capability installed artifact with Lexicon, or select a variant/version explicitly:

from lexhint import Lexicon

lexicon = Lexicon("en")  # highest installed compatible variant
runtime = Lexicon("en", variant="runtime")
pinned = Lexicon("en", variant="runtime", dataset_version="2026.08.20")
info = lexicon.word("compiler")
print(info.known, info.frequency_rank, info.has_lowercase, info.has_titlecase, info.has_uppercase)
print(lexicon.segment("compilerword"))

Locale is optional runtime presentation state, not a dataset identity. The base language remains en, and all of these requests can use the same physical artifact:

neutral = Lexicon("en")
british = Lexicon("en", locale="GB")
american = Lexicon("en", locale="en-US")

locale accepts the canonical GB and US values plus their supported aliases. Without a locale, English remains region-neutral. Locale-aware ordering and labels use only regional tags retained from source data. Frequency remains base-language English data, not British or American frequency.

Runtime access is local-only, deterministic, read-only, and never fetches missing entries or mutates the database. complete() performs deterministic normalized lexical-key prefix completion and is not a spelling corrector. It requires only the lexical capability, returns an exact key first, and ranks remaining full-prefix matches by corpus rank when available or lexical order otherwise. suggest() is the separate bounded fuzzy-spelling API and requires search; match_headwords() provides glob/regex matching; search_definitions() provides indexed dictionary-text search and requires dictionary plus search. Search results are bounded by the artifact's available coverage. segment() and semantic context operations require full authoritative coverage.

The public runtime operations are:

lexicon.word("compiler")
lexicon.contains("compiler")
lexicon.segment("chatgpt")
lexicon.context_domains(text, target=(start, end))
lexicon.supports_domain(text, target=(start, end), domain="computing")
rich = Lexicon("en", variant="rich")
rich.entries("compiler")
rich.suggest("complier", limit=20)
rich.match_headwords("comp*", syntax="glob")
rich.search_definitions("computer program", fields=("glosses",), match="all")

Dictionary membership is authoritative. Frequency rank and count enrich existing lexemes but never create corpus-only words. Lexicon.word() reports normalized membership and the attested lowercase, titlecase, and uppercase forms. uppercase_only is true only for a known lexeme with uppercase attestation and no lowercase or titlecase attestation.

Lexicon.segment() additionally applies surface-case acceptance rules. Therefore, an uppercase-only GPT entry does not validate lowercase gpt, and segment("chatgpt") can report chat as known and gpt as unknown. Consumers can use the richer word() evidence for context-specific policy without weakening segmentation.

Semantic results are explainable DomainEvidence values containing score and nearby ContextCue records. Context is measured from the target character span: overlapping lexical tokens are excluded, while a target containing no lexical token acts as a virtual boundary and leaves adjacent words eligible at distance 1. These are soft hints, so missing evidence is not negative evidence and positive evidence is not semantic certainty.

Build an artifact

The default build creates a full lexical,semantic,dictionary,search artifact and automatically acquires the pinned full FrequencyWords source:

lexhint dictionary build en

Use a local or remote dictionary source and explicit build policies when needed:

lexhint dictionary build en --source ./raw-wiktextract-data.jsonl.gz
lexhint dictionary build en --capabilities lexical,semantic --no-frequency
lexhint dictionary build en --capabilities lexical,search --no-frequency
lexhint dictionary build en --profile runtime
lexhint dictionary build en --frequency-source ./en_full.txt
lexhint dictionary build en --refresh-frequency
lexhint --offline dictionary build en --source ./raw-wiktextract-data.jsonl.gz

Capabilities are canonicalized in the order lexical,semantic,dictionary,search. semantic, dictionary, and search require lexical. Dictionary-text search additionally requires dictionary. Profiles are shortcuts: runtime means lexical,semantic, and rich means lexical,semantic,dictionary,search.

complete() is prefix completion only; it does not correct spelling. Use suggest() for fuzzy spelling candidates, match_headwords() for glob/regex lexical-key matching, and search_definitions() for indexed dictionary sense search.

Frequency enrichment is independent of capabilities. Use --no-frequency for a valid lexical artifact without corpus data. Automatic sources are cached under ~/.cache/lexhint/sources/frequencywords/<revision>/, or an equivalent XDG/LEXHINT_CACHE_DIR location. Builds record source URLs, revisions, hashes, schema, capabilities, and builder metadata. Build configuration and progress are written to stderr, while the final result, including JSON, is written to stdout.

CLI queries

The default download installs the runtime variant. Install the rich variant before using search-capable commands such as suggest, headwords, or dictionary search:

lexhint dataset download en --variant rich

lexhint word compiler -l en
lexhint word compiler -l en --variant runtime
lexhint segment chatgpt -l en --dataset-version 2026.08.20
lexhint context "The compiler is 8.3.2." -l en --target 16:21
lexhint complete comp -l en --limit 10
lexhint --json complete comp -l en --limit 10
lexhint suggest compilar -l en --variant rich --limit 10
lexhint headwords 'comp*' -l en --variant rich --syntax glob
lexhint dictionary search "large feline" -l en --variant rich --fields glosses --match all
lexhint --json dictionary search "large feline" -l en --variant rich
lexhint dictionary word compiler -l en --variant rich
lexhint dictionary status en --variant runtime

All artifact-consuming query commands accept --variant and --dataset-version; --path remains an explicit custom-file override. Use --json for one JSON document on stdout. Dataset list, info, and validate are local; available and download access the published catalog.

Dictionary word output has three human-readable detail levels. The default standard view shows all senses with compact metadata. Use compact for a deliberately short shell view, or full for every field retained by the local Lexhint dictionary model:

lexhint dictionary word love
lexhint dictionary word love --detail compact
lexhint dictionary word love --detail full
lexhint dictionary word love --detail full --hide examples,tags
lexhint dictionary word love --detail compact --show examples
lexhint dictionary word love --pos noun,verb --exclude-pos proper_noun
lexhint --json dictionary word love --pos noun

The --show and --hide options accept repeatable comma-separated fields. Canonical fields are etymology, pronunciations, forms, tags, topics, examples, synonyms, and antonyms; the all, entry, sense, and relations groups are also supported. --width controls human output from 40 through 240 columns.

Human CLI output uses ANSI color automatically on interactive terminals. Use --no-color or the NO_COLOR environment variable to disable it. Color is never emitted for JSON or non-TTY stdout.

Use --json for stable, complete machine-readable output. POS selection applies to JSON entries, while --detail, --show, --hide, and --width are human-only options. dictionary status reports current SQL row counts, capabilities, provenance, size, and build metadata without rebuilding. Use --path as an advanced override when inspecting a specific artifact. Rich dictionary lookup reports a controlled capability error for compact runtime artifacts.

Data and scope

The builder consumes Wiktextract-compatible JSONL, commonly from Kaikki, and FrequencyWords full files for optional corpus enrichment. See DATA_SOURCES.md for source and licensing information.

Lexhint does not implement Spokenform integration, dataset publication, URL parsing, speech rendering, or consumer-specific interpretation rules. The separate buchwandler/lexhint-datasets repository is outside this project.

Development

Contributor setup uses an editable installation with development tools:

git clone https://github.com/buchwandler/lexhint.git
cd lexhint
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q
ruff check .
mypy lexhint