Where can I obtain a file in simple text format, listing all English words, or even a major subset of them? With such a list available, I could write simple programs to determine, e.g., whether "dreamt" really is the only English word that ends in "mt." I know such lists exist, for example the spell-check dictionary used in Microsoft Word. But I’ve never been able to find one in text form, or anything I could convert to text form.

Hi Jim, and welcome!

An interesting idea!  I did a quick ‘google’ and found this:

Kevin’s Word List Page

He has a collection called "SCOWL":

SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists) is a collection of word lists split up in various sizes, and other categories, intended to be suitable for use in spell checkers. However, I am sure it will have numerous other uses as well.

Sounds like you may be able to adapt to your interests!

Aha!

How about this - Grady Ward’s Moby:

   The Moby lexicon project is complete and has
   been place into the public domain. Use, sell,
   rework, excerpt and use in any way on any platform.
   
   Placing this material on internal or public servers is
   also encouraged. The compiler is not aware of any
   export restrictions so freely distribute world-wide.
   
   You can verify the public domain status by contacting
   
   Grady Ward
   3449 Martha Ct.
   Arcata, CA  95521-4884
   

Surely you can use something from here.

-Tim

Tim -

Thanks! These appear to be very good leads. It will take me at least a day to fully evaluate them, but I think I’m now on the trail! (I couldn’t even think of which key words to use in Google.)

The Moby site says its word list is also available from Project Gutenberg, so I’ll check that out too.

Jim

Tim -

Grady Ward’s Moby site at http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Moby/ has a link to "Moby Words" or "mwords.tar.z". When this compressed file is downloaded and unzipped, the result is a folder containing several files, most of which are word lists with different purposes.

The file 354984si.ngl is what I was looking for.

It’s defined in the folder’s readme.txt file as follows:

"Over 354,000 single words, excluding proper names, acronyms, or compound words and phrases. This list does not exclude archaic words or significant variant spellings."

Thank you very much for your help. You’ve provided what I have been looking for.

Thanks,
Jim Scott

Excellent!   :D

Glad to be of service!

-Tim