News
  • 10 February 2021

A brilliant lexicon: DiaMaNT

What is the similarity between adamant, a brilliant and a jewel? The answer to this question is that in the past, diamond was synonymous with these three words. Can you discover this with only one simple query? Yes, that is possible with DiaMaNT.

What is DiaMaNT?

At the beginning of last year, the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) developed the web application http://diamant.ivdnt.org/diamant-ui/ "> DiaMaNT (Diachronic seMantic lexicon of the Dutch Language) made available to researchers and other interested parties.

This lexicon contains a total of more than 300,000 synonyms. These synonyms are from the dictionary definitions of articles from Middle Dutch Dictionary (MNW) and the Dictionary of the Dutch Language (WNT).

With the current version of DiaMaNT it is possible to find synonyms of a word from the period 1250-1976. For example, instead of butcher, the words slaughterer, skinner and flesher could be used.

The (longer) blog about DiaMaNT (in Dutch) can be read in full on the website Neerlandistiek.