Intro
@jmsv and @parker57 started a side project to analyse etymologies of text written by various historical authors, expecting there to already be a library for retrieving etymological data. On discovering that this wasn't the case, ety was created!
There isn't a single source of truth for etymologies; words' origins can be heavily disputed. This package's source data, Gerard de Melo's Etymological Wordnet, is mostly mined from Wiktionary. Since this is a collaboratively edited dictionary, its data could be seen as the closest we can get to a public consensus.
Install
pip
pip install etyUsage
Module
>>> import ety
>>> ety.origins("potato")
[Word(batata, language=Taino)]
>>> ety.origins("drink", recursive=True)
[Word(drync, language=Old English (ca. 450-1100)), Word(drinken, language=Middle English (1100-1500)), Word(drincan, language=Old English (ca. 450-1100))]
>>> print(ety.tree("aerodynamically"))
aerodynamically (English)
├── -ally (English)
└── aerodynamic (English)
├── aero- (English)
│ └── ἀήρ (Ancient Greek (to 1453))
└── dynamic (English)
└── dynamique (French)
└── δυναμικός (Ancient Greek (to 1453))
└── δύναμις (Ancient Greek (to 1453))
└── δύναμαι (Ancient Greek (to 1453))CLI
After installing, a command-line tool is also available. ety -h outputs the following help text describing arguments:
usage: ety [-h] [-r] [-t] words [words ...]
positional arguments:
words the search word(s)
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-r, --recursive search origins recursively
-t, --tree display etymology tree
Examples
$ ety drink
drink # List direct origins
• drync (Old English (ca. 450-1100))
• drinken (Middle English (1100-1500))
$ ety drink -r # Recursive search
drink
• drync (Old English (ca. 450-1100))
• drinken (Middle English (1100-1500))
• drincan (Old English (ca. 450-1100))
$ ety drink -t # Etymology tree
drink (English)
├── drinken (Middle English (1100-1500))
│ └── drincan (Old English (ca. 450-1100))
└── drync (Old English (ca. 450-1100))Development
In a virtual environment - Pipenv is recommended:
python setup.py install