  This paper proposes a method for measuring semantic similarity between words
as a new tool for text analysis. The similarity is measured on a semantic
network constructed systematically from a subset of the English dictionary,
LDOCE (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). Spreading activation on the
network can directly compute the similarity between any two words in the
Longman Defining Vocabulary, and indirectly the similarity of all the other
words in LDOCE. The similarity represents the strength of lexical cohesion or
semantic relation, and also provides valuable information about similarity and
coherence of texts.
