A further way to compact the word list, is to define word synonyms. Many times, when describing the same thing, a person may use different words. For the purposes of a complete ontology, only one such word is necessary. Thus, synonyms can be defined.
To define word synonyms, click "Synonym Information" in the WordList Editor
The synonym page contains these features
1) The Synonym Group of the current word
This is the group of synonyms of the current word, including the word itself.
2) The Corrected WordList
This is the word list after all the user-specified corrections. It does not contain any words already defined as synonyms, or any preferred synonyms (see below). The user may draw from this list to add synonyms to the current synonym group.
3) Adds currently selected word in the Corrected Word List to the Synonym Group
4) Removes currently selected word in the Synonym Group from it
5) The current Preferred Synonym of the Synonym Group
The user needs to define a preferred synonym for every synonym group. This is the only word that remains seen in the corrected word list. If a user was to view all the occurrences of this word through the Word List Editor, all the occurrences of all words in the synonym group would be displayed.
6) Sets the currently selected word in the Synonym Group to be the preferred synonym of the Synonym Group
7) Sets the user typed-in word to be the preferred synonym of the Synonym Group
In some cases, a synonym that the user might want to set as the preferred one for the group would not be in the WordList. In this case, it is possible to manually type in a new word that would be added to the synonym group as a preferred synonym, and it will be the reference in the word list for the other synonyms.
For reference, the user may view all the existing synonyms in the next two list boxes
8) List of all preferred synonyms in the current WordList
These are all the preferred synonyms of all synonym groups defined so far.
9) List of words in the synonym group, whose preferred synonym is selected above.
If a user selects a preferred synonym in (8), all synonyms of that preferred word are displayed in (9).
Once the Synonym Group is finished, the user can click "Finish" to go back to the WordList Editor
Go Back To The WordList Editor