Fun Word Stuff

I am aware that there may be some of you out there who assume I get all my ideas from the The Big Boy’s Book of Wizard Words and I won’t spoil things by confirming or denying it. I do, however, like words and their usage – so anything that pops up on the World Wide Waste of Time to do with them naturally piques my interest. I thought that by way of a slight departure from the norm, I’d share a link or two with you that I have discovered recently.

First up is a dictionary (stop yawning at the back!). Web-based dictionaries have the slight problem of being somewhat – to use the vernacular – crappy. The definitions are often poor or badly-researched and often both. I will not risk incurring the wrath of the owners of these sites but if you’ve been stuck for a word and tried to use the “big three”, you’ll know which ones I am talking about. The most notable exception is, of course, the Oxford English Dictionary but in this case, you get what you (are obliged to) pay for. With all this in mind, it’s nice to stumble across Definr. I know, it’s got a stupid ‘hip’ name (think Flickr) but it’s quick and seems surprisingly accurate. The definitions are concise – i.e. they have little or no etymology and only brief references – but I was impressed that a search for ‘jovial’ also brought up synonyms, including ‘jocund’. Worth a bookmark, as it is based on the Princeton open WordNet – a collaborative, free access lexicographical resource.

Also based on the Princeton resource but using it in an entirely different way is VisuWords. This one really knocked my socks off. Type a word into the box and click the arrow button and you can see the links to your word being formed visually. If my blogging skills are good enough, you will see a graphic below which illustrates this. There are ‘nodes’ of words, connected by different types and colours of line, depending upon the other nodes’ relationship. It all branches out into a very pretty and really useful graphic, which can be dragged around the screen so you are able to view all the links created. Example links created are: ‘substance of’, ‘pertains to’, ‘entails’, ’causes’, and derivation, along with the usual suspects: noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Be careful how you use this – you may forget what you originally intended to search for!

Last on today’s list of things that will waste your day is a site with much more worthy intentions. True, you can build your vocabulary using this site but you can also donate food (for free) to places like Bangladesh, Bolivia, Myanmar and Nepal through the World Food Program. FreeRice is not a scam and they require nothing other than participation. I will be adding a link to my blogroll and would encourage my regular readers to take part. It costs nothing and is a bit of fun into the bargain. The game is simple: you are presented with a word and you must then match it to its correct meaning. It’s multiple choice and there are four possible answers. I decided to see how far I could get whilst donating 1000 grains and I reached vocabulary level 43. If you think Tom can’t cut the mustard, why not try it yourself and post your scores here? The sound you can hear is a gauntlet being thrown down!