Is there any order in WordNet's synsets?

Question

I am using WordNet to access synonyms that share a common meaning. Here is an example:

from itertools import chain
from nltk.corpus import wordnet as wn

synsets = wn.synsets("drink")
# synsets = [Synset('drink.n.01'), Synset('drink.n.02'), Synset('beverage.n.01'), ...]
synonyms = set(chain(*(x.lemma_names() for x in synsets)))
# synonyms = {'drinking', 'drinkable', 'crapulence', 'toast', 'drink', 'drunkenness', ...}

Are synsets sorted? And, in case they are, what are the criteria? Are the first synsets of the list those which have higher chances to be correlated to the given word?

I would like to limit the number of synonyms by keeping only the "most important" ones (what "important" means in this context is to be defined, but I wonder whether WordNet has its own concept of "important").

If synsets are not sorted, what could be an alternative way to find the most appropriate synonyms of a word?

Answer 1

I am a bit late but I was also looking for the order and I found this on their webpage: They are ordered by estimated frequency of usage. On the official website it is written:

"-syns (n | v | a | r )
Display synonyms and immediate hypernyms of synsets containing searchstr. 
Synsets are ordered by estimated frequency of use. [...]"

source: https://wordnet.princeton.edu/documentation/wn1wn