Looking for a good reverse look up reference site for...

Started by Shadowclaw, March 11, 2014, 11:25:02 PM

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Shadowclaw

slang, idioms, sayings, etc. I can usually only think of a related word, meaning, or synonym, which doesn't get me anywhere on all the reference sites I've found through Google. The Free Dictionary tries but very rarely is any help. I already know of onelook, word hippo, dictionary.reference.com, and thesaurus.com, but none of them can help me with this. Can anyone recommend a good reverse look up reference site for this purpose?

If there isn't one... it sure would be nice if someone was suddenly inspired to build one. *nudge nudge* :D

Inkidu

Are you looking for period slang, etc. or modern?

Period is covered by most dictionaries. I even saw one that had apeshit in it.

Modern, you might try Urban Dictionary, but it has... security issues so I'm told. Never experienced them first-hand myself.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shadowclaw

Normal dictionaries or reverse look up? And are there any reverse look up that are dedicated to this kind of thing?

Inkidu

Quote from: Shadowclaw on March 12, 2014, 11:53:51 AM
Normal dictionaries or reverse look up? And are there any reverse look up that are dedicated to this kind of thing?
Honestly, I have no idea what you mean by "reverse look up". :\
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shadowclaw

#4
You've never used a reverse look up dictionary or thesaurus before? Here, try this and see what I mean:

http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml

Basically its where you look up a word by its meaning, when you can't remember the word it self. You can use a site like that to describe the word, then it'll give you a list of words that it thinks you're describing. :) That site works better than the reverse look up books I've tried using in the past.

Inkidu

Quote from: Shadowclaw on March 12, 2014, 02:00:42 PM
You've never used a reverse look up dictionary or thesaurus before? Here, try this and see what I mean:

http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml

Basically its where you look up a word by its meaning, when you can't remember the word it self. You can use a site like that to describe the word, then it'll give you a list of words that it thinks you're describing. :) That site works better than the reverse look up books I've tried using in the past.
Actually, I found that sort of unhelpful. :\ I put it through several paces and the term (whose definition was pasted in verbatim) I was looking for didn't even get in the top ten. :|
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Petronius

I'd say your best bet is posting on http://english.stackexchange.com/ . You usually get helpful replies within minutes.

alextaylor

Yeah, this kind of thing is actually difficult to code, on the level that you could get filthy rich by being the first person to do. I use English SE for that kind of thing. Sometimes the answer pops up on a suggestion while you're typing the question.
O/O

TwoHundredTabs

It's been an endless source of frustration for me when I know there's a word or phrase I'm looking for that more precisely describes what I want to say (so, not necessarily a hyponym, but perhaps a certain turn of phrase), and I simply can't recall it.  Something like meronyms for things that tend to not have many words (like emotions) are especially hard. I so want emotional and sexual lexicons to be expanded.

I'd give all of my dollars for a website that could help with finding the right words, as I'm almost never just looking for something as simple as a synonym. I'm not going to pay for something as inefficient/ineffective as Visual Thesaurus, so Wikisaurus ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Wikisaurus )  is one of my favorite things.

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