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Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

#41

Post by MildlySerious »

I use Google Translate. If you translate single words from one language to another you get a list with possible meanings, neatly grouped together to derive some context for the meaning along with it.

Since most of the time I am looking for a word I have something in mind in my native language, or vice versa, that usually works for me.

Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

#42

Post by mekazu »

I find if I'm struggling to come up with a word it's because I've lost the conversational flow of the sentence I'm writing, or of the point I'm trying to make. If I try to describe it out loud to an imaginary or, ideally, a real person, I'm usually then able to convey what I was trying to say, though usually by restructuring the form of the argument, rather than by conveniently finding the right word.

Often complex thoughts come to me not as fully constructed sentences. I might forget how I intended to finish a sentence by the time I'm three words in, lost in a forest of opportunities for converting the faint cognitive signal to an established element of prose.

I find I am better able to articulate a problem after I've explained it to a number of people on different occasions. The first person I explain it to won't have the foggiest what I'm talking about, probably because I'm constantly grasping for words, but to the fifth person the problem will seem trivial.

Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

#44

Post by punee »

If you know the word and you're looking for synonyms, use a thesaurus.[1]

If you know the general idea and want a more precise word to describe it, I'd look into WordNet, especially concepts like hyponyms (subsets of a general word, car -> ambulance) and troponyms (different ways of performing the word, useful for verbs, e.g. eat -> slurp, gobble, peck).[2]

If you know the context and you want a word that "sounds good" in that context, use a collocations dictionary.[3]

[1] http://www.thesaurus.com/ [2] http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn [3] http://www.ozdic.com/collocation-dictionary/pupil

Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

#46

Post by sharmi »

teamhappy wrote: post #16

I usually use thesaurus.com and oxforddictionaries.com If that doesn't do it I check quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl and english.stackexchange.com and maybe books.google.com/ngrams to find out what's commonly used ...

grammar-girl is an informative resource and I can forsee myself spending hours :). How do you use the ngrams?

Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

#47

Post by sharmi »

hiacc wrote: post #29

My vote goes to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ or http://www.tfd.com/ for short. Check out the http://www.tfd.com/beautiful example

It is very comprehensive but don't you feel like there is too much going on there? Like there are two many sources? Would you think if it is restricted to only a few choice sources, it would be less cluttered? Or do the different definitions give more clarity?

Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

#49

Post by sharmi »

punee wrote: post #44

If you know the word and you're looking for synonyms, use a thesaurus.[1] If you know the general idea and want a more precise word to describe it, I'd look into WordNet, especially concepts like hyponyms (subsets of a general word, car -> ambulance) and troponyms (different ways of performing the word, useful for verbs, e.g. eat -> slurp, gobble, peck).[2] If you know the context and you want a word that "sounds goo…

ozdic is something new for me. Thanks!
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