A word database organized by meanings, synonyms, and word relationships.
WordNet is a seating chart for words. “Sofa” and “couch” sit at the same lunch table.
It helps search and Q&A pick the right meaning. So Apple the company is not treated like a snack.
NLP
WordNet gave early NLP a hand-built source for word meanings.
Ontology
WordNet is a word ontology with synonym groups and parent-child links.
Dist. Semantics
WordNet uses human rules, and Dist. Semantics learns from text.
ImageNet
ImageNet used WordNet meaning groups to define early categories.