Dictionary data for MySQL?
I’m told WordWeb, a dictionary application for Windows, allows you to find words, quite unlike the MacOSX dictionary. I’ve never even found a usable dictionary when I use Linux, that doesn’t require me to go online.
The whole idea is that if I search for the phrase cure all, I get back a thesaurus entry that suggests the word panacea. OK, that example alone wasn’t so great, because cure-all tends to be a word in these dictionaries. WordWeb Online allows me to have a “reverse dictionary” result, which I think is just fabulous (as long as I have access to an Internet connection).
Does such a Mac app exist? Seems WordWeb exists for the iPhone, but their Java app, requires an Internet connection.
What’s interesting is that they sell the dictionary data. They are powered by MySQL, and if you’re wanting to grab their dictionary data in either tab separated plain text files or a MySQL database, you fork out a mere USD$999.
That’s a lot of money for a database file. I have no intention of spending that much money, considering the restrictive licensing on their site. So I searched, and found GCIDE_XML – described as “The GNU version of The Collaborative International Dictionary of English, presented in the Extensible Markup Language”. I tried to see if it had reverse dictionary search results, but it didn’t.
So, does anyone know if there’s English dictionary data out there, for MySQL, that doesn’t cost a bomb and is comparable, to WordWeb? Of course, it also comes with sensible licensing, will be an added bonus.
