SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists) and Friends is a database of information on English words useful for creating high-quality word lists suitable for use in spell checkers of most dialects of English. The database primary contains information on how common a word is, differences in spelling between the dialects if English, spelling variant information, and (basic) part-of-speech and inflection information.

The original SCOWL (SCOWLv1) was a compilation of the information in the database into a set of simple word lists that can be combined to create speller dictionaries of various sizes and dialects (American, British (both -ise and -ize), Canadian and Australian).

SCOWLv2 instead combines all that information into a single text file and SQLite3 database. In order to keep the file size manageable and to avoid noise entries the minimum SCOWL size is now 35 and the 95 size is not included.

Unlike SCOWLv1, SCOWLv2 includes the proper spelling of abbreviations that included the trailing dot. It also includes words that were excluded from SCOWLv1 such as hyphenated and open (i.e. with space) compound words, and words with special symbols in them.

SCOWL is derived from many sources under a BSD compatible license. The combined work is freely available under a MIT-like license. See the file Copyright for details.

SCOWLv2 is still a work in progress. The 60 size should as of 2024-08-23 contain about the same set of words as SCOWLv1. The processing of the source data is completely different so the resulting wordlists are not the same. Most of the changes I regard as corrections for improper handling of derived forms or variants in SCOWLv1. The handling of possessive forms have been completely redone based partly on the noun category assigned by WordNet. For American English any new changes to non-possessive forms of words included in speller dictionary have been accounted for and noted in the file misc/comp-60.txt. The 70 size should also be about the same but no attempt has been made to verify this as of yet.

SCOWLv2 is generated from the the same sources that SCOWLv1 uses but via a far more complicated, and unreleased, process. The results of this process is in the file scowl-pre.txt. That file is then combined with other files to create the final version scowl.txt and the sqlite3 database scowl.db.

SCOWLv2 requires Python 3 and SQLite. It currently requires Python 3.7 and SQLite 3.33.0. Newer versions should work, older versions may work but are not supported.

A Unix like environment is also required for now.

In order to use SCOWL the database must first be created from the source files in the data/ directly. To do so simply type:

make

which will create the sqlite3 file scowl.db which is all that you need for most operations. If required the flat text file can also be created with make scowl.txt.

To work with SCOWL use the scowl script provided in the root directory. This script is a very thin wrapper around the libscowl python module. The module is not available on PyPI, but instead included with SCOWL. This script is meant to be run from the root directory of the SCOWL distribution.

To extract wordlists from the database use:

./scowl --db scowl.db word-list 60 A 1 > wl.txt

If --db option specifies the database file to use. The option defaults to 'scowl.db' or the value of the SCOWL_DB environment variable if set.

The positional arguments to the word-list are the SCOWL size (in this case 60), spellings to include (in this case A for American), and the max variant level (in this case 1, which excludes most variants except for special cases such as dox and doxx). The exact meaning of all these values are described in the File Format section.

The above command will create a word-list that corresponds to the default dictionary for American English, with the exception that dialectic marks (i.e. accents) are preserved. To remove the marks use the --deaccent option:

./scowl word-list 60 A 1 --deaccent > wl.txt

The default word filter strips the trailing dot from abbreviations, to instead keep them:

./scowl word-list 60 A 1 --dot True > wl.txt

To exclude abbreviations altogether (including unmarked ones):

./scowl word-list 60 A 1 --poses-to-exclude=abbr > wl.txt

To disable the word filter and include all words:

./scowl word-list 60 A 1 --no-word-filter > wl.txt

To create a British word list:

./scowl word-list 60 B 1 > wl.txt

To create a British word list that include -ise, -ize, and other variant spellings:

./scowl word-list 60 B,Z 5 > wl.txt

The default word list includes roman numerals and slang words only really used by computer programmers such as "grepped". To exclude these and any other special categories of words use:

./scowl word-list 60 A 1 --categories= > wl.txt

To create a larger wordlist:

./scowl word-list 70 A 1 > wl.txt

For additional options use:

./scowl word-list --help

Using the SQLite3 database directly is also supported. Most of the database is defined in the files schema.sql, views.sql and scowl.sql in the libscowl/ directory. The main entry point for extrating word lists is the scowl_v0 query.

As SCOWLv2 is still in an alpha/testing phase the command line utility and schema is subject to change. At some point the command line interface will stabilize. The schema may still be subject to change but a new scowl_v1 view will be provided that is guaranteed to always provide the same results. New columns may be added, but not in a way that will break existing queries. If is is necessary to break existing queries a new view will be provided.

To search for an entry in scowl use:

./scowl search [--db scowl.db] [--by-cluster] [--exact] WORD [WORD ...]

where WORD is one or more words to search. By default search will return the groups with any of the supplied words. To instead return the entire cluster use --by-cluster. The search by default is fuzzy, to instead search for the exact word use --exact.

You can also filter the database to only show the information you are interested in and avoid noise. You can either create a new database or simply export the results.

For example, to filter the database to only include sizes 70 or lower and export the results to scowl-filtered.txt:

./scowl filter --size 70 by-line --db scowl.db --export > scowl-filtered.txt

To instead create a new database with the results use:

./scowl filter --size 70 by-line --db scowl.db --target scowl-filtered.dn

There are three ways to filter the database by-line, by-group and by-cluster. by-line will only keep the lines that match the filter arguments, by-group will instead keep the entire group and by-cluster will keep the entire cluster. If you use the by-cluster option the --show-clusters option might be useful when exporting the database. For example:

./scowl filter --size 70 by-cluster --export --show-clusters > scowl-filtered.txt

When filtering by line you can also remove some information, which can help simplify complex entries. The available filters are size to remove the size and instead use the size specified in the --size argument, category to remove all categories, region to remove all regions and tag to remove all tags. If you filter by a single spelling then the spelling information will automatically be removed. For example, to get a simplified view of what will be included for the default word list in American English:

./scowl filter by-line --size 60 --spellings A --variant-level 1 \
        --simplify size,tag --export > scowl-filtered.txt

See ./scowl filter --help for additional usage.

As previously mentioned the scowl script is a very thin wrapper around the libscowl package. As such, you can instead use python3 -m libscowl instead of going through the script. Use of the python module directly instead of through the command line interface is also supported to some extent. Calling the high level functions as it done in the __main__.py is supported, but the API may stil change. Direct use of the internal data structures, however, is not supported.

Most everything is stored in a single file (scowl.txt) with the following format:

FILE := CLUSTER ...
        [FOOTNOTES]

CLUSTER := GROUP ...
           [CLUSTER-COMMENT] ...

GROUP := LINE ...
         GROUP-COMMENT
         '\n'

LINE := SCOWL_INFO ': '
        ([VARIANT-INFO ' ' ... | OVERRIDE) ': ']
        LEMMA_INFO
        [': ' ENTRY ', ' ...]
        ['#!' WARNING] ...
        ['#' COMMENT] ...
        '\n'

SCOWL_INFO := SIZE [' ' REGION] [' ' CATEGORY] ([' ' TAG] ...)

LEMMA_INFO := LEMMA [' <' POS ['/' POS-CLASS ] '>'] [' {' DEFN-NOTE '}'] [' (' USAGE-NOTE ')']

REGION := 'US' | 'GB' | 'CA' | 'AU'

TAG := '[' TAG-TEXT ']'

LEMMA := [GROUP-ANNOTATION] WORD [ANNOTATION] | '-'

VARIANT-INFO := SPELLING [VARIANT-LEVEL]

SPELLING := 'A' | 'B' | 'Z' | 'C' | 'D' | '_'

VARIANT-LEVEL := '.' | '=' | '?' | 'v' | '~' | 'V' | '-' | '@' | 'x'

OVERRIDE := '+'

GROUP-ANNOTATION := '-' | '@' | '!'

ANNOTATION := '*' | '-' | '@' | '~' | '!' | '†'

ENTRY := DERIVED | '(' [DERIVED-VARIANT-INFO ' ' ... ': '] DERIVED '|' ... ')'

DERIVED := WORD [ANNOTATION] | '-'

DERIVED-VARIANT-INFO := [SPELLING] [VARIANT-LEVEL]

GROUP-COMMENT := '## ' COMMENT-TEXT

CLUSTER-COMMENT :=  '## ' HEADWORD [' (' OTHER-WORDS ')'] ':\n'
                    ('## ' COMMENT-TEXT '\n') ...
                    '\n'

FOOTNOTES := ('#: ' FOOTNOTE-TEXT '\n') ...

Anything between single quotes is a literal. Space is only present if it is within single quotes. Within a literal the \n means a new line. Anything between square brackets ([]) is optional. The Bar (|) means a choice between one or the other. The ellipsis (...) means to optionally repeat the previous element(s). If the ellipsis is after a literal, it means to repeat, but use the preceding literal as a separator.

A CLUSTER is a very loose groupings of groups in order to keep related words together. There is no indication within the file itself what the clusters are.

A GROUP represents one sense of a word. Groups are separated by empty lines.

SIZE is the SCOWL size with larger numbers meaning less common words. The sizes have the following approximate meanings:

35: small
50: medium
60: medium-large (size used for default spell checking dictionary)
70: large (size used for large spell checking dictionary)
80: a valid word in current usage
85: a valid word

A TAG is sometimes use to provide information on what source list the word came from.

The source for the majority of words is from lists that Alan Beale has a large part in creating, which provides a level of consistency. These lists are then supplemented from a number of signature lists. Most of these words are unmarked. Finally, some additional sources where used that Alan had no part in and are often of British origin, words from these lists are tagged as the fact they are from an alternative source provides useful information.

Words from a few special lists are also tagged.

Anything that starts with #! or #: is generated by the database export code and is ignored when parsing. Similarly the † annotation is generated by the export code and ignored when parsing.

The '#:' lines at the end of the file contain dumps of various information from the database. If there is any disagreement between the documentation and this information, the information at the end the file takes precedence.

The LEMMA is the base form of the word.

The part of speeches (POS) or as follows:

n: noun
v: verb
m: noun/verb
aj: adjective
av: adverb
a: adjective/adverb
pn: pronoun
c: conjunction
pp: preposition
d: determiner
i: interjection
abbr: abbreviation
s: contraction
pre: prefix
suf: suffix
wp: multi-word part
we: multi-word ending
x: non word (for example a roman numeral)
n_v: noun and verb
aj_av: adjective and adverb

The m and a are special POS'es that should not used for new entries. The m is assigned when all the word forms for a verb where found in a word list, but no POS info was found for that word. It is probably a verb and could also be a noun. Similarly, The a means it could be an adjective or adverb.

The n_v and aj_av are special combined POS'es.

Within a line the derived forms of a word are in a specific order. A single dash (-) is used if a particular word form is missing. The order is one of:

n: n0
n: n0 [ns] [np]
n: n0 ns np nsp

v: v0
v: v0 vd [vn] vg vs
v: v0 vd vd2 vn vg vs vs2 vs3 vs4

n_v: m0
n_v: m0 vd [vn] vg ms [np]
n_v: m0 vd [vn] vg ms np nsp

m: m0
m: m0 vd [vn] vg ms

pn: p0
pn: p0 pn1 pns pnd pnp pnr0 pnrs

d: d
d: d ds
d: d d1 d2

a*: a*0
a*: a*0 a*1 a*2

we: we [wes] [wep]
we: we wes wep weps

Entries marked by square brackets are optional and can be excluded without the use of a dash placeholder. Trailing entries for pronouns (pn) can also be excluded without the use of a dash placeholder.

The derived forms are as follows:

n0: noun
ns: noun: plural
nss: noun: plural of plural
np: noun: possessive
nsp: noun: plural possessive
nssp: noun: plural of plural possessive
v0: verb
vd: verb: past tense (-ed)
vd2: verb: past tense plural (were)
vn: verb: past participle (-en)
vg: verb: present participle (-ing)
vs: verb: present tense (-s)
vs2: verb: present tense second-person singular (are)
vs3: verb: present tense third-person singular (is)
vs4: verb: present tense plural (are)
m0: noun/verb
ms: noun/verb: (-s)
aj0: adjective
aj1: adjective: comparative (-er)
aj2: adjective: superlative (-est)
av0: adverb
av1: adverb: comparative (-er)
av2: adverb: superlative (-est)
a0: adjective/adverb
a1: adjective/adverb: comparative (-er)
a2: adjective/adverb: superlative (-est)
pn0: pronoun
pn1: pronoun: objective (you/him/her/...)
pns: pronoun: plural
pnd: pronoun: determiner (your/his/her/...)
pnp: pronoun: possessive (yours/his/hers/...)
pnr0: pronoun: reflexive singular (yourself/...)
pnrs: pronoun: reflexive plural (yourselves/...)
c: conjunction
pp: preposition
d: determiner
ds: determiner: plural
d1: determiner: comparative
d2: determiner: superlative
i: interjection
abbr: abbreviation
s: contraction
pre: prefix
suf: suffix
wp: multi-word part
we: multi-word ending
wes: multi-word ending: plural
wep: multi-word ending: possessive
weps: multi-word ending: plural possessive
x: non word

The POS-CLASS is a string to qualify the POS, for example place. The current tags are experimental and at the moment can't be used to reliably filter out proper nouns.

The DEFN-NOTE is used to distinguish two different senses of the same lemma.

The USAGE-NOTE is used to mark offensive, vulgar, non-standard and other similar words. At the moment the marking of offensive, vulgar only really covers the worst offenders and the marking of non-standard and similar words is very incomplete.

to mark slang, informal, and non-standard words.

The SPELLING and REGION codes are as follows:

A: US: American
B: GB: British "ise" spelling
Z: GB: British "ize" or Oxford spelling
C: CA: Canadian
D: AU: Australian
_:     Other (Never used with any of the above).

If there are no tags with the Z spelling category within a group then B implies Z. Similarly if there are no C tags then Z implies C. If there are no D tags then B implies D.

The VARIANT-LEVELs are as follows:

 : 0: non-variant
.: 1: include
=: 2: equal
?: 3: disagreement
v: 4: common
~: 5: variant
V: 6: acceptable
-: 7: uncommon
@: 8: archaic
x: 9: invalid

The v indicator is used for most words marked as variants in the dictionary. However, some variants will be demoted to a V. For example, if the variant is marked as "also" by Merriam-Webster, or if only some dictionaries acknowledge the existence of the variant. - is used when the variant is generally not listed is the dictionary but there is some evidence of its usage. The @ is used for an archaic spelling of the word. The x is used when the spelling is generally considered a misspelling, and is only included for completeness.

The ., =, and ? are special cases for when there is little agreement on the preferred form. The . is used when both forms are considered equal and should be included in the default word list; it is generally used when the spellings is different enough that is unlikely one will be confused with the other. The = means they are still equal but only the non-variant should be included by default. The ? is used when there is some disagreement but there one form is generally preferred over the other.

The ~ indicator means the word is a variant but no information is available on the level, it should not be used for new entries.

An annotation is one of the following:

*: usage dependent
-: uncommon
@: archaic
~: inapplicable
!: infrequent
†: ambiguous lemma

The * annotation is used for nouns when, depending on usage, the plural is sometimes same as the singular form. This is generally used for certain animals (especially fish) and cardinal numbers.

The † is added by the database export code to indicate that the spelling of the derived form is also used for a separate unrelated lemma.

The - is used to mark a significantly less common form of a word. ~ is used to mark plurals nouns that are generally not used, for one reason or another, except in very specific circumstances. ! is used for forms of a word that are nearly non-existent. @ is used to mark archaic forms a word.

The textual format does not map directly to the underlying database. In particular it includes some redundant information that is not present in the database:

• The group annotation, pos, pos-class, defn-note, and usage-note are associated with the group and not the lemma and as such must be the same for each line.

• SCOWL information is attached to a particular POS within a group and not the word itself. This means that all variants of a word must have the same SCOWL info.

The POS pairs noun/verb and adjective/adverb are normally combined into a single group when doing so will not introduce additional noise. The POS pairs can be split by using:

./scowl split-pos scowl.db

And can then be combined using:

./scowl combine-pos scowl.db

Both these commands modify the database in place and are reversible.

SCOWL contains all the information in VarCon but the resulting file format does not lead to easy translation. The underlying database does.

Within the database any words with the same group_id and pos are considered variants of each other. You can access variant information via the words_w_variant_info view.

For example to convert the word color from the American to the British spelling you could use this query:

select distinct b.word
  from words_w_variant_info as a
  join words_w_variant_info as b using (group_id, pos)
where a.spelling in ('_','A') and a.variant_level <= 6
  and b.spelling in ('_','B') and b.variant_level <= 1 and a.word='color';

which, in this case, will return colour as the only result. This query will match up to the variant level of 6 (acceptable or V) for the American spelling but only up to level 1 (include or .) for the British. In some cases there may be multiple matches; for example, if the word was program, the query will return both program and programme as the correct spelling depends on context: it's program is the case of computer program but programme in most other contexts. If the word is the same in both dialects the query will return the same word.

For the foreseeable future scowl.txt will be generated by combining scowl-pre.txt will the other files in the data/ directory using the combine.py perl script.

To add new entries to SCOWL you should generally add the info to data/extra. Words added to this file will get the [extra] tag. If a word is special in some way, for example a neologism, then the word can be added to data/signature instead to have the [+] tag applied. Both these files are in the merge format.

To make corrections or add variants information use one of data/fixes, data/variants, or data/compounds. The first should be used for making corrections, the seond for adding variant information, and the last for adding variant information strictly related to the preferred form of compound words. These files are in the adjust format.

To bump a word to a higher SCOWL size use data/exclude. This file is also in the adjust format however it should only use a subset of the format. The SCOWL size given should be the minimal SCOWL size that the word should be included and the tag '[-]' must be used.

There are other files are used by the combine.py that are in a special format. These files should, in general, not need to be modified.

Merge files are used when adding new entries. There is limited suport for merging groups and adding variant information with the addition of the new entries.

Files of this format should start with the line:

#:: merge [TAG]

where TAG is an optional tag to add to all new entries. Other than that the format is exactly the same as scowl.txt except that new data is merged with existing groups when there is a match.

Variant information can be provided as part of the new information. If there is a match than the new information will take precedence as long as it doesn't create inconsistencies. If more than one existing groups matches, than the two groups will be merged, again as long as it doesn't create inconsistencies. Existing group comments are assumed to relate to variant information and will be removed if new variant information is provided for all lemma forms within the group.

If any inconsistencies are found the merge will be aborted.

Variant level inconsistencies will arise when there are additional forms found in the database that are not mentioned; to resolve this, simply provide the additional forms.

Inconsistencies can also arise when merging groups if the two groups have conflicting information. To resolve the conflict, assign a new value. To remove the group-annotation use _. To remove the pos-class use <POS/>. To remove the usage note use ().

Adjust files are used when adjustments are needed to be made to entries or groups. This included marking new variants.

Asjust files shoud start with the line:

#:: adjust

After thet, the format is similar to the main scowl.txt format but the parsing and processing is different. Each line is similar to a line in scowl.txt but is optionally prefixed by one of ?, +, -, =, ~, or # that dictates how that line is processed. The prefix must be followed by a space. The prefixes have the following approximate meanings:

none: match and make adjustments
?: match and make adjustments if found
+: add
-: remove
=: replace
~: transfer
#: a comment (i.e. ignored)

Unless prefixed with a +, a line is first matched with an exiting lemma in the database using the word, pos, and defn-note. If no match is found the group will be skipped. To avoid this and instead just skip the line, use ?. If the line is prefixed with a -, than that lemma will be removed from the group. If the line is prefixed with a ~, than no additional actions will be taken, but the information found in the database will be used to make adjusted to the scowl info.

If a line has no prefix, or is prefixed with a =, than after a match is made, any other information provided as part of the the lemma info, will change the existing information in the database. If a piece of information is blank, than it will be reset to the default or removed; however, if it is missing than no change will be made. For example, a pos of <n/> will will remove the pos-class for the group but a pos of <n> will not. A underscore _ can be used as an annotation to replace a group or entry rank with the default. The pos and defn-note can also change if the → (U+2192) is used as part of the pos or defn-note. For example:

dialog <n→wp> {dialog box}

will change the pos from a noun to a word-part. If have a compose key configured on Linux you can type → with Compose->. You can also just copy and paste as you shouldn't need to type → very often.

If the line has no prefix, than any derived forms provided will be matched by the word and pos and any forms with a single dash (-) will be ignored. If the line has a prefix of =, than any derived info will instead replace the existing ones for that lemmas.

If any variant info is given for a lemma or a derived form, than the variant information for all relevant lemmas or forms will be replaced, including those without a variant prefix. For example (hyaenas | V: hyaena) will change the variant info for both hyaenas and hyaena even though hyaenas doesn't have a variant prefix.

SCOWL info is handled separately and can not be changed in the same line as the other information. A SCOWL line generally has the form:

SCOWL-INFO ': ...'

Where the ... is a literal. If any SCOWL info is given the line must be prefixed with one of +, -, or =. If the prefix is a + that scowl info is added. If the prefix is a - than that specific scowl info is removed. If the prefix is a = than the scowl info is partly replaced. In particular any scowl info with a size less then the provided size will be removed.

If two lines within the same group match different groups in the database, the two groups will be merged when the prefix is anything but ~.

If no lines that match an existing group are found, a new group will be created. When adding a group either a SCOWL info line or a line with ~ prefix must be part of the group. When the ~ prefix is used that line will be used to intelligently assign SCOWL info for the group. For example this:

~ rive <v>: -, riven, -, -
+ riven <aj>

will assign riven the same SCOWL info as the derived form riven for the verb rive as the word matches.

If a line in a different group within the adjust file matches the same group within the database, the group will be split. For example:

cohost <m→n>

cohost <m→v>

will split cohost with the m pos into a noun and a verb. As a shortcut, when splitting a m or a pos, you can also use n_v and aj_av as the target pos, which will expand into a n and v or a aj and av respectively. For example, to split the above cohost group, you could instead just write:

cohost <m→n_v>

When splitting a group other changes must be made to the group to prevent having the same lemma, pos, and defn-note within more than one group. To prevent this in the simple case, when ever a pos is changed, existing groups with the target pos are merged into the same group. In other words the above example is equivalent to:

? cohost <n>
cohost <m→n>

? cohost <v>
cohost <m→v>

The most straight forward use of an adjust file is to add variant info. For example:

A C: kindergartner <n>
AV B: kindergartener <n>
A- B-: kindergärtner <n>

Will mark kindergartner, kindergartener, and kindergärtner as variants of each other. If any of the lemmas were in separate groups they will be combined.

Sometimes one or more of the lemmas in a variant group may be missing derived forms. The adjust file can also be used to correct this; for example:

A B=: fete <n>: fetes
Av B: fête <n>: fêtes

A B=: fete <v>: feted, feting, fetes
+ Av B: fête <v>: fêted, fêting, fêtes

will mark fete and fête as variants of each other. In addition it will add the verb form of fête to match the verb form of fete. Listing the derived forms in the other lines is not strictly needed, but will help avoid errors as when a derived form is listed in an entry without a prefix it must match what is in the database.

The adjust file format can also be used to adjust variant info for derived entries; for example:

strew <v>: -, (strewn | .: strewed), -, -

will adjust the variant information for the past participle form. The derived forms with a - will be ignored, so no other adjustments will be made.

The word thru is somewhat of a special case. In is acceptable to use thru as part of the word drive-thru, but generally not considered a proper spelling of through. It is also different enough in spelling that it unlikely that the two forms will get confused so I want to let the word thru in but only at SCOWL sizes 70 or higher. I also want to add an entry for thru when part of drive-thru but tag it for US only. The following lines accomplish this:

A B: through <aj_av>
AV B-: thru <aj_av>
+ 70: +: thru <aj_av>

A B: through <pp>
AV B-: thru <pp>
+ 70: +: thru <pp>

+ thru <we> # drive-thru
= 50 US: ...

The + after the size is a an override to force the word thru in at size 70 at all variant levels. The comment at the end is a lemma comment and will carry over to scowl.txt.

SCOWLv2 is a complete overhaul of SCOWL and nearly everything changed. However, there is limited backward compatibility support via the mk-list script. If you used mk-list in SCOWLv1 is should still produce the same results, but please sanity check the output by comparing the results to the the last version of SCOWLv1. If you created word lists by combining files in the final/ directory your scripts will need to be rewritten. Please use the word-list command of the scowl script to get the word lists you want.

If you are using the word-list command please note that the variant levels has changed. The original 0 level is now levels 0-1, the original 1 variant level is now 2-4, level 2 is now 5-6, level 3 is now 7-8, and level 4 is 9. This mapping is also available in the varinats_levels table in the database.

The speller/ directory of SCOWLv1 has been ported over. Creating the Aspell and Hunspell dictionaries should work the same as they did with SCOWLv1, but again please sanity check the results. Official dictionaries will continue to be created.