WireWordTools by Ryan Cramer

API methods for English word inflection and lemmatization plus ability to use them in search queries.

Currently focused on English language word functions including inflection and lemmatisation. Provides a simple API for using these functions.

Provides the ability to automatically hook into ProcessWire (3.0.162+) to enhance text searches that use any operator with a plus in "+" in it, which are the query expansion operators. For example, a search query for “fishing boat” …

$pages->find('title~|+=fishing boat');

…would automatically expand to include all these words: fishing, fished, fishes, fish, boat, boats, boating.

Please note the results are not always going to be perfect here, but intended to strike a balance between maintainability and accuracy. The goal being to provide potentially helpful word additions for ProcessWire-based search engines needing word variations.

The JSON dictionary files in the ./lemmas/ and ./roots/ directories was converted from PHP files in the Lemmatizer project © 2018 Mark Fullmer.


  1. Copy all module files to: /site/modules/WireWordTools/
  2. In the ProcessWire admin, click to Modules > Refresh
  3. On the Modules > Site tab, click “Install” for this module.

// Get instance of module
$tools = $modules->get('WireWordTools');

// Get alternate words for given word
// returns [ 'words', 'worded', 'wording' ]
$words = $tools->getWords('word');

// Get plural value of given word
// returns "words"
$plural = $tools->getPlural('word');

// Get singular value of given word
// returns "word"
$singular = $tools->getSingular('words');

This module is a work in progress and more methods are likely to be added, word data expanded, etc.

Install and use modules at your own risk. Always have a site and database backup before installing new modules.

Latest news

  • ProcessWire Weekly #490
    In the 490th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we'll check out what's new in the latest core version ProcessWire 3.0.229, introduce a brand-new third party module, and more. Read on!
    Weekly.pw / 30 September 2023
  • ProcessWire 3.0.226 new main/master version
    After 8 months in development we are excited to bring you ProcessWire 3.0.226 main/master. This version has a ton of great new features, improvements and optimizations, plus more than 100 issue fixes. This post takes an in-depth look at highlights from this great new version.
    Blog / 25 August 2023
  • Subscribe to weekly ProcessWire news

“We were really happy to build our new portfolio website on ProcessWire! We wanted something that gave us plenty of control on the back-end, without any bloat on the front end - just a nice, easy to access API for all our content that left us free to design and build however we liked.” —Castus, web design agency in Sheffield, UK