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News & ArtsTuesday, June 9, 2009
Books / Teh Internets There Goes The Rest of My Year
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 1:50 PM
This is one of those websites that I can't believe I didn't think of first: Wordnik is a website on which you can look up words. But it's not just a dictionary:
At Wordnik, you get:* real example sentences to show words in context
* meaningful information about your word's frequency and use patterns
* related words—not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that behave in similar ways
* the chance to contribute to our knowledge of English through recording pronunciations, pointing us towards new words, adding tags and related words, and leaving your notes.
It's part dictionary, part web-tymology, and part wiki: I especially like the feature that shows real-time Twitter usages of the word and the graph that shows how often the word has been used in the last two hundred years. I chose the word "oblong" out of the blue and here's the graph and frequency for "oblong":
I want to type in every word I know*.
(Via.)
* Dear commenters who hate me: Allow me to write this comment for you: "That oughta take about twenty minutes or so." Haw!
1
Dear Paul Constant,
I love you, but I hate you for showing me this website. There goes the rest of my life.
Love, Jocelyn.
I love you, but I hate you for showing me this website. There goes the rest of my life.
Love, Jocelyn.
4
Yikes, Paul, I am trying to work and you give us this wonderful site! Thanks.
I entered in the word erstwhile .
I entered in the word erstwhile .
5
Ohmygod, this is amazing. I just looked up 'grelot', a word that I discovered when I was poking around in the OED many years ago. It's from the French, and is a little bell, the sort which you might see attached to a belly dancer's costume.
What was the example text that Wordnik gave me?
Grelot is really now my favorite word.
What was the example text that Wordnik gave me?
When Pekin was plundered the Harems contained a number of balls a little larger than the old musket-bullet, made of thin silver with a loose pellet of brass inside somewhat like a grelot; these articles were placed by the women between the labia and an up-and-down movement on the bed gave a pleasant titillation when nothing better was to be procured. — Arabian nights. English
Grelot is really now my favorite word.
6
A nice idea, but that graphic would make Edward Tufte's head spin. Isn't "unusualness" just the inverse of frequency? A simple line plot would have been a lot more readable.
8
This is cool, but I think the statistics bit is off - it told me I should expect to see "thou" about twice a week and that it was used the most in 1980.
Also, while we're on word-nerd time-wasters, check out the International House of Logorrhea.
Also, while we're on word-nerd time-wasters, check out the International House of Logorrhea.
10
@5 ... when nothing better was to be procured.
Heh.
This beats the heck out of typing "define [word]" in google's search field.
Heh.
This beats the heck out of typing "define [word]" in google's search field.
11
I'm with you, 8. I love the site but I don't get the stats. It told me I'd be likely to see the word "dude" twice a year, which seems a bit slim...
13
I put in one of my favorite words: Salacious
I also put in "phony" and was sad they didn't use an example from "the catcher in the rye."
@11
Dude, dude, dude. You're right, those stats are for shit.
I also put in "phony" and was sad they didn't use an example from "the catcher in the rye."
@11
Dude, dude, dude. You're right, those stats are for shit.
17
Apparently, "clusterfuck" was used quite often (though unusually) in the 1920s. I add my voice to the collective that wonders about these stats.
18
Yeah, the stats are pretty questionable. I'm only going to hear the word douche twice this year and it was most popular in the 50's? Not bloody likely. Still fun though.
19
Cunt: "But talking of it makes me awfully stiff now; let me kiss your lovely cunt, and have a fuck on the chair."
I love you, Paul...
I love you, Paul...
20
the statistics are total bullshit. if you're going to claim to estimate the frequency of a word's usage for the past 200 years, the least you can do is describe your methodology. makes for a cute graph tho.
21
Cool..but no audio.
When my husband is in a foul mood,I go to dictionary.com and make it say things like bunghole, bunghole,bung,bung bung bunghole.
Always get a laugh.
Yep I am a 5 year-old boy.
When my husband is in a foul mood,I go to dictionary.com and make it say things like bunghole, bunghole,bung,bung bung bunghole.
Always get a laugh.
Yep I am a 5 year-old boy.
22
It`s fun for classic old words, but it has problems with anything that has changed recently. It says we`ll hear gay twice a month, and twitter once a year.
23
Must be a brand-new site--"sh*t" has only been looked up 91 times (well, 92 now), and "c*nt" 157 (well, 158).
24
Some of the examples that pop up are just plain wrong. I looked up "incarnadine," which is one of my favorite color adjectives, and it came up with:
"A later attempt at Paris to "incarnadine" the neighborhood of the Champs de Mars, and "round up" a number of boulevardiers, met with a more disastrous result."
Yeeeeeah....I think what you were searching for was "incarcerate," buddy. Thanks for playing!
"A later attempt at Paris to "incarnadine" the neighborhood of the Champs de Mars, and "round up" a number of boulevardiers, met with a more disastrous result."
Yeeeeeah....I think what you were searching for was "incarcerate," buddy. Thanks for playing!
25
"Incarnadine" is also a transitive verb meaning "to redden, to make something red." We still need more cultural context to make sense of the example you cite, but grammatically at least it is possible to incarnadine a neighborhood.
26
hey paul, have you seen this word ticker thing? pretty cool.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/09/milli…
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/09/milli…
27
I know one of the guys who worked on this; he explained this site to me while we hung out in a hot tub with drunken swing dancers. Way cool to see it go live.
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