OED Researcher API
The OED Researcher API offers a range of endpoints to enable academic researchers to query, retrieve, and interact with OED content in sophisticated, customized ways.
We believe that the OED should be able to serve all scholars who want to investigate the sociological, historical, economic, or geographical record of the English language or use this data to fuel research in the wider humanities disciplines.
Our goal is to further develop the OED’s offering to actively support the needs of academic research as they evolve in the coming years.
The OED Researcher API will provide unprecedented access to the OED’s huge and uniquely curated English language dataset.
It will enable academic researchers to quickly and easily access and manipulate the OED’s data, using a series of sophisticated endpoints to surface data that will fuel new and exciting avenues of research.
We have developed a prototype of the OED Researcher API and are looking for academic researchers interested in employing such a tool in their work to contribute their insights and ideas to further inform its development.
Endpoints
Word
/words/
List of words.
/word/{id}
A specified word, identified by ID.
/words/{id}/senses/
List of senses belonging to the word specified by ID.
/words/{id}/quotations/
List of quotations belonging to the word specified by ID.
/words/{id}/roots/
List of English roots for the word specified by ID.
/words/{id}/derivatives/
List of words derived or compounded from the word specified by ID.
/words/{id}/surfaceforms/
List of surface-forms associated with the word specified by ID.
/words/{id}/frequency/
List of frequency values for the word specified by ID.
/lemmatize/
A list of words that are possible lemmatizations for an inflected form or variant spelling
Sense
/words/{id}/senses/
List of senses belonging to the word specified by ID.
/senses/
List of senses.
/sense/{id}
A specific sense, identified by ID.
/sense/{id}/quotations/
List of quotations belonging to the sense specified by ID.
/sense/{id}/synonyms/
List of synonyms for the sense specified by ID.
/sense/{id}/siblings/
Senses that are “siblings” of the sense specified by ID, i.e. senses that belong to the same word.
/semanticclass/{id}/senses/
The senses belonging to the semantic class specified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/branchsenses/
The senses belonging to the semantic branch specified by ID.
Quotation
/word/{id}/quotations/
/word/{id}/quotations/
/sense/{id}/quotations/
List of quotations belonging to the sense specified by ID.
/quotations/
List of quotations.
/quotation/{id}
A specific quotation, identified by ID.
Surface-form
/surfaceforms/
List of surface-form records.
/surfaceform/{id}
A specific surface-form, identified by ID.
/lemmatize/
A list of words that are possible lemmatizations for an inflected form or variant spelling
/lemmatizetext/
List likely lemmatizations for tokens in a sentence or other short string of text.
Semantic class
/semanticclass/{id}
A semantic class, identified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/senses/
The senses belonging to the semantic class specified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/branchsenses/
The senses belonging to the semantic branch specified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/parent/
The parent (superordinate) class of the semantic class specified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/ancestors/
The ancestor (superordinate) class of the semantic class specified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/children/
The immediate child (subordinate) class of the semantic class specified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/descendants/
All child and descendant classes of the semantic class specified by ID.
/semanticclass/{id}/siblings/
Sibling classes of a given semantic class.
Lemmatization
/lemmatize/
A list of words that are possible lemmatizations for an inflected form or variant spelling
/lemmatizetext/
List likely lemmatizations for tokens in a sentence or other short string of text.
Utility endpoints
/topics/
List valid topic values.
/regions/
List valid region values.
/usage/
List valid usage values.
/languages/
List valid language values.
/parts_of_speech/
List valid part-of-speech values.
/etymology_types/
List valid etymology-type values.
Register your interest
We would like to invite you to take part in shaping the development of the OED Researcher API.
Your constructive shared insights will help us to ensure the OED Researcher API meets the needs of the wider academic community, enabling researchers with the desire to consume raw historical language data to advance their academic research.
Register your interest, and a member of the OED team will be in touch with more information.