Wordnet is on-line lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. The Perl Journal . POD Definitions 5 papers explaining the motivation and implementation of Wordnet. For example, it can tell you that a desk is a kind of furniture, that a desk has drawers and legs, and that a desk is made of wood.
Wordnet can make applications 'smart'.
The entire lexicon has been rewritten and converted to a Berkeley DB file format to allow for dynamic insertion of data and fast retrieval. Pointer types have been added to allow for object attributes and functions. Since hyponyms in Wordnet inherit this data, an oven is also electrical, and is used to prepare food. This might happen in the future, but I am not an authority for the lexicon, and don't plan on moderating it. Expanding the existing lexicon is easy, however, and I have some scripts which will significantly increase the pointer counts for the databases.