Gnorium

Etymology

The name “Gnorium” embodies Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (“to know”), the ancient root visible in English knowledge, ignorance (from Latin i-gnōrāre “not-knowing”), cognition, recognize, Spanish conocer, French connaître, Ancient Greek γιγνώσκω (gignṓskō), γνῶσις (gnôsis), Sanskrit ज्ञान (jñāna), and dozens more—revealing how this 6,000-year-old “gno-” base connects humanity's quest to know across languages, making Gnorium literally “the place of knowing”.

Mission

Gnorium is a multilingual dictionary platform that traces the historical evolution of words through attestations—quotations evidencing lexical usage in context. Built on international standards (ISO 639-3, UDC, Dublin Core), the system integrates AI-assisted analysis with human curation to create a structured, provenance-first knowledge graph for linguistic research.

Core Principles

Spatial, not textual: Transform etymology from linear text into interactive graph visualizations
Root-based understanding: Trace every definition to its etymological foundations
Transparent provenance: Every claim links to verifiable attestations and references
Standards-based: Built on ISO 639-3, UDC, Dublin Core, and lexicographic best practices

Architecture

Gnorium is architected with a core English layer serving as the primary source of truth for all dictionary entries and etymologies. An overlying translation layer enables users to view content in any supported language. Translations are managed as structured overlays, preserving the integrity of the original English data while allowing multilingual access.

International Standards

Gnorium implements international standards for data quality, interoperability, and scholarly value:

ISO 639-3: Language codes for 7,000+ languages (living, extinct, ancient, constructed)
ISO 15924: Script codes for 150+ writing systems (Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, Han)
UDC: Universal Decimal Classification for subject domain categorization (60,000+ subdivisions)
ISO 15836-1 (Dublin Core): Bibliographic metadata for citations and provenance
ISO 8601: Date and time representation for chronological precision
ISO/IEC 10646 (Unicode): UTF-8 encoding supporting all scripts

Theoretical Grounding

Gnorium's methodology synthesizes foundational work across lexicography, corpus linguistics, and digital humanities:

Murray's Historical Method: Dictionary entries trace meaning through time via dated quotations
Sinclair's Idiom Principle: Meaning resides in collocation patterns, not isolated words
Rosch's Prototype Theory: Graded category membership informs polysemy and sense relations
Fillmore's Frame Semantics: Words evoke conceptual frames—understanding requires context
Lakoff & Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory: Systematic mapping of abstract concepts through concrete metaphors
Talmy's Force Dynamics: Language encodes causation, agency, and force interactions
Blank & Koch's Semantic Change Typology: Classifying meaning shifts across time

These principles are implemented throughout the data models, particularly in AttestationSignificanceModel (26-dimension significance matrix) and LemmaAttestationAffiliationModel (sense relationships and semantic change tracking).

Privacy & Security

Gnorium is built with privacy and security as foundational principles:

Minimal data collection: Only essential information for service functionality
IP address hashing: Visitor tracking uses hashed IP+User-Agent combinations, not raw addresses
GDPR-compliant audit logs: Tamper-evident logging (AuditLogModel) for compliance
HTTPS everywhere: All traffic encrypted with TLS 1.3
Rate limiting: API endpoints protected against abuse
No third-party trackers: Zero analytics trackers or ad networks

Legal & Licensing

Gnorium operates under Fair Use principles for scholarly purposes. Short quotations (attestations) illustrate word usage historically—a transformative educational purpose. Users retain copyright to original contributions but grant Gnorium a license to use, display, and adapt submitted content for the platform's educational mission.

The platform is proprietary, committed to Open Science Infrastructure principles: published schemas, read-only API access, methodology documentation, and provenance metadata for all data.

Contact

Email: info@gnorium.com