Definitions

Inspiration

What it does

How I built it

• Download a scan of 1912 Laird and Lee's edition of Websters
• OCR all the pages (pyOCR)
• Match up continuous lines of definitions (lots of heuristics)
• Identify illustrations
• Identify syllables, and final word rhymes (using Pronouncing, CMU Pronounciation Dictionary, NLTK, and some guesses)
• Sort rhymes by closeness to iambic meter (stress/unstress)
• Format rhymes by popular schemes
  • Ballade: ABABBCBC" -> "BCBC"
  • Cinquain: "A,B,A,B,B"
  • Alternate Rhyme: ABAB
  • Limerick: AABBA
  • (some short/long rules, based on what sound right more than any research)
• Generate poems, with title referring to the definitions
• Format generated poems as images (PIL)
• Dynamic title line breaks
• Pull out square-ish images from dictionary pages, create a mask, overlay onto header

Challenges I ran into

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

• identifying the actual definitions from the OCR

What I learned

What's next for Definitions

• Fix OCR, different source
• Page numbers
• Improve styling
• Share the code!