OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards • Hacker News Board

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#11

Post by dougb5 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

fortenforge wrote: post #10

dougb5 wrote: post #6

I'm the developer of OneLook and happy to answer any questions about it! It's been running continuously since 1996 and I've been (very slowly) adding features to it over the past couple of decades.

Do you see spikes in usage during large puzzlehunt events?

I haven't noticed that, although I do get feedback from the puzzle hunt community from time to time!

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#12

Post by justaguyhere » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

dougb5 wrote: post #6

I'm the developer of OneLook and happy to answer any questions about it! It's been running continuously since 1996 and I've been (very slowly) adding features to it over the past couple of decades.

where do you get the word lists from?

edit : never mind, found the list https://www.onelook.com/?d=all_&v=s&sort=&langdf=all

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#13

Post by MaxBarraclough » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

dougb5 wrote: post #6

I'm the developer of OneLook and happy to answer any questions about it! It's been running continuously since 1996 and I've been (very slowly) adding features to it over the past couple of decades.

I used to use OneLook! It must have been about 17 years ago. Congratulations on such a long-running website.

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#14

Post by dougb5 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

justaguyhere wrote: post #12

dougb5 wrote: post #6

I'm the developer of OneLook and happy to answer any questions about it! It's been running continuously since 1996 and I've been (very slowly) adding features to it over the past couple of decades.

where do you get the word lists from? edit : never mind, found the list https://www.onelook.com/?d=all_&v=s&sort=&langdf=all

OneLook crawls and indexes the headwords from ~1000 online dictionaries and glossaries. When you do a wildcard search, it searches all of these lists at once. Clicking on one of the results will show you the sources. The sites range from small subject-specific glossaries with a few dozen words, to commercial dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and OED.

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#15

Post by chime » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

I wrote a similar app long ago and people still seem to be using it: http://chir.ag/projects/tip-of-my-tongue/

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#16

Post by k_sze » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

I could really use something like that, with the additional ability to add custom sources.

My use cases:

I read e-books in Calibre[1]. When I read novels in The Witcher series or in the Forgotten Realms meta-series, I need to lookup words that may or may not be just a creature in the universe of the novel. Having a page that automatically looks up a word in both real dictionaries and in The Witcher or Forgotten Realms wiki would be really cool.

My daughter also reads e-books in Calibre, but her English is nowhere near my level. It's a second language for her. So she needs to be able to look up words in English-Chinese dictionaries.

[1]: https://calibre-ebook.com/