Artha is a free cross-platform English thesaurus that works completely off-line and uses WordNet as its database.
It has distinct features like look up on a global hot key press, passive notifications of a selected text’s definitions, suggestions for misspelled words, etc. Once launched, Artha sits on the system tray. The user can select text on any window, and summon Artha by pressing the user-set hotkey combination, which pops up Artha with the word looked up. Should you want passive notifications without Artha’s window popping up so that your workflow is undisturbed, it can be done by enabling the ‘Notifications’ option. This results in a desktop notification (balloon tip) of the selected word’s prime definition from WordNet, from the system tray, when the hotkey is pressed.
It may be used as an advanced replacement for the proprietary WordWeb.
Key Features
- Shows Synonyms, Antonyms, Derivatives, Pertainyms (Related Noun/Verb), Attributes, Similar Terms, Domain Terms, Entails (what verb entails doing), Causes (what a verb causes to), Hypernyms (is a kind of), Hyponyms (kinds), Holonyms (is a part of) and Meronyms (parts).
- WordNet – Artha harnesses the extensive & in-depth database provided by WordNet. Unlike other dictionaries which goes on-line for every single lookup, Artha works completely off-line; thanks to WordNet for its excellent and cognitive database.
- Hot key Lookup – When you press a pre-set hot key, after selecting some text on any window, Artha pops up with the selection’s definitions looked-up.
- Regular Expressions Search – When a word is vaguely known I.e. the user is unclear of its spelling or when it’s start/end alone is known or when the number of characters is known; one can speed up/narrow the search using regular expression to locate the particular word they have in mind.
- Notifications – Artha can show passive notifications (balloon tips) instead of the application’s window popping up, so that you can continue what you were doing, uninterrupted. (like reading, writing, etc).
- Suggestions – When a misspelled word is queried for, Artha gives you its near-match suggestions.
- Relative to Sense Mapping – Relative words like synonyms, antonyms, etc. that are displayed are many. You might not know to which sense/definition of a word does a relative map to. In Artha, when you select a relative, its corresponding definition is scrolled to and highlighted for easy comprehension.
- One-the-fly search/filtering of wordnet terms as you type.
- Lookup history made persistant; can be cleared or stored for user’s reference.
Website: artha.sourceforge.net
Support: SourceForge
Developer: Sundaram Ramaswamy
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
Artha is written from scratch in pure C using GTK+, with WordNet as its database corpus. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Dictionary Tools | |
|---|---|
| GoldenDict-ng | Advanced dictionary lookup program, supporting many formats |
| GoldenDict | Feature-rich tool offering translations of words and phrases |
| PyGlossary | Tool for converting dictionary files aka glossaries |
| OpenDict | Supports popular computer dictionary formats including Slowo and Mova |
| xfce4-dict | Client program to query dictionaries |
| SilverDict | Web-based alternative to GoldenDict |
| Artha | Handy off-line thesaurus based on WordNet |
| Wordbook | Offline English-English dictionary application built for GNOME |
| Quick Lookup | Simple GTK dictionary application |
| sdcv | Simple cross-platform text-base utility |
| AyanDict | Basic dictionary app |
| StarDict | Powerful features such as Glob-style pattern matching |
| charcoal | Command line dictionary that's an alternative to wudao-dict |
| cambd | Cambridge dictionary CLI app |
| Words | Multilingual offline dictionary |
| rdict | Offline CLI dictionary using data from wiktionary. |
| Lexi | Self-driven dictionary app |
| Kotoba | Japanese – English dictionary |
| GNOME Dictionary | Simple, clean, GUI DICT tool |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |