English etymology dataset
CC BY-SA 4.0 · derived from Wiktionary
This is a machine-derived table of 5,173 English words. For each word it records which layer of English the word arrived in, and the donor language recorded in the source entry. It is the data behind the word cards in Strata, and it is published here so that anyone can take it.
The file
etymology.json /v1/etymology.json — JSON, about 100 KBAttribution
Derived from Wiktionary (English), whose text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Under section 4(b) of that licence, a database containing a substantial portion of the contents is adapted material, so this derived database is published under the same licence.
Neither Wiktionary nor the Wikimedia Foundation endorses this dataset or the app that uses it.
What each row says
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
etym["word"][0] |
1 — already in English before 1066. 2 — came in from French, after 1066. 3 — came in from Latin and Greek, in the 1500s. |
etym["word"][1] |
The donor-language code taken from the source entry
(ang, fro, la, grc …). |
count |
Number of rows. Cross-check it against the real key count before you trust a copy. |
What it is not
It is a mechanical reading of one source, not a scholarly one. Where the source routes a word through French that other dictionaries route straight from Latin, this table follows the source. The three layers are dates, not a ranking: no row in this file says a word is better than another word.
Why it lives here and not inside the app
Section 3(b) of CC BY-SA 4.0 forbids applying effective technological measures to adapted material. Apps distributed through the iOS App Store are wrapped in FairPlay, and Creative Commons’ own wiki notes that distributing CC-licensed material that way may violate the licence. So this file is never shipped inside the app binary. The app downloads it from here on first run and keeps a copy on the device.
The app itself — its code, its sentences, its rules about how letters sound — is a separate work and is not covered by this licence.
Stellandra · etymology.json · licence