Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ames.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!hao!ames!jaw From: jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods) Newsgroups: net.research,net.unix,net.nlang Subject: Webster's Second (234,936 word list) now ARPA-accessible Message-ID: <848@ames.UUCP> Date: Mon, 4-Mar-85 22:45:58 EST Article-I.D.: ames.848 Posted: Mon Mar 4 22:45:58 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 04:17:04 EST Distribution: net Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA Lines: 46 Xref: watmath net.research:131 net.unix:3838 net.nlang:2673 # What are words worth? -- The Tom Tom Club Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style. -- Jonathan Swift, Letter to a Young Clergyman, 1720 Words butter no parsnips. -- Southern proverb _____ As promised long ago, I am making available the wordlist from Webster's Second International Dictionary to those with 'ftp' access to ARPAnet. The kind soul at Bell Labs who provided me with this word hoard maintains that it is public domain. The note inside the covers of Webster's Third indicates a copyright date of 1934 for 'web2'; legal protection for 'web3' began in 1961 and is still in effect. Since dictionaries are living entities, you be the judge of its efficacy -- we will have to wait for the likes of Lawrence Urdang and Univ. of Toronto to finish input of the OED for the (pen)ultimate word on the English language. Web2 is by far too large for 'uucp' transmission. In fact, I have encoded the files for ARPA xmission by a factor of four (to about one MB) by using a combination of the ever-popular 'compress' program and a specialized "incremental encoder" written in a few lines of C. This has been done in order to lighten the load on our gracious host (RIACS -- Research Institue for Advanced Computer Science), at the expense of increased decoding time on the recipient machine. This should all be invisible to you, if you wish, since the procedure is simply: - login via "anonymous ftp" to riacs.ARPA - cd ~ftp/pub/web2 - retrieve web2.shar, web2.sq.Z, and web2a.sq.Z followed by installation with sh web2.shar make web2 which also makes 'compress' and 'unsqueeze' before turning over 2.4MB of output to 'sort -f'. If you think that this is also a ploy to get you to install the second-generation 'compress' on your system, indeed it is such. This way, ARPAnauts can do some one-stop shopping. Web2a is a supplementary list of hyphenated terms as well as assorted noun and adverbial phrases. Web2 has already served me and others well in conducting certain frivolous research into "word jazz". Inquire within. -- James A. Woods {ihnp4,hplabs}!ames!jaw (or, jaw@riacs)