Category Archives: Wordnik Info

Stuff about Wordnik.

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Wordnik’s New Word Page: Lists

Continuing our walk through our revamped word page (last week we talked about the expanded Related Words section), today we’ll look at Lists.

Let’s use last week’s example, tree. Here’s the top of the word page:

Click on List and you’ll be taken to this section of the page:

On the left, you’ll see some of our favorite lists containing tree (determined by our own brand of interestingness).  To the right, you’ll see your own lists.  Toggling the check box on and off a particular list adds or takes away the given word from that list.

Click the check box to add word to list.

Click on the check box again to remove the word from the list.

If you hover over a particular list, you’ll see view to the right.

Click view and you’ll be taken to the page of that particular list.

Going back to the word page, scroll down a bit and you’ll see even more lists that contain that word, along with the number of words in each list.

Curious about our favorite lists? Check out this post celebrating the milestone of 25,000 user-generated lists, and follow us on Twitter or Facebook to keep up with our lists of the day.

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Wordnik’s New Word Page: Related Words

You probably noticed that last month we launched a redesigned word page, and that our new pages include an expanded Related Words section.

What do we mean by “related words”?  Synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, words used in the same context, a reverse dictionary, and tags. But what does all of that mean?

Here’s the top of the word page for tree:

Click on Relate and you’ll be taken here:

First up are synonyms, or words with the same or similar meaning, for instance, timber and sapling.

You’ll also find hypernyms, otherwise known as superordinates, or words that are more generic or abstract than the given word.  The prefix hyper- means “over, beyond, overmuch, above measure,” so you can think of a hypernym as a sort of umbrella over more specific words.  A hypernym for tree might be flora.

Hyponyms, or subordinates, are words that are more specific than the given word (the prefix hypo- means “under, beneath”).  Simal, coralwood, kingwood, and willow are specific types of trees (hey, that would make a great list!).  Same context refers to words that might be used in a similar context, such as wood, grass, garden, and branch. (One could argue that branch is also a meronym, or “a term that names part of a larger whole,” for tree.) We use the great resource WordNet for much of our hyponym and hypernym data.

The Reverse Dictionary section lists words that contain the given word in their definition. Tags are anything you might want to tag the given word and Tagging lists words that have been tagged with the given word.

We’d love your feedback as you explore our new Related Words section!

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Wordnik’s Word Pages: now with 86.5% more resplendence

We’re happy to announce today a new look for the (millions and millions of) Wordnik word pages:

The new pages are cleaner, easier to navigate and read, more colorful, and have been shown in controlled, double-blind experiments to increase the love of words, writing and speaking skills, and vocabulary retention by up to 115% in test subjects*.

New features include an expanded Related Word (thesaurus) section, with a new “Reverse Dictionary” section:

screenshot of related words at "better"

Word pages now include list previews, so you can easily see information about the lists that include the word you’ve looked up:

We’ll be rolling out more improvements and more new features across all of Wordnik.com over the next few weeks. As always, you can send us your thoughts via feedback@wordnik.com or by leaving a comment here.

[*test subjects may or may not have been Wordnik employees and their families.]

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Wordnik for Nook!

We’re thrilled to be powering the official word of the day application for the Nook Color, now available at the Nook Apps store!

Learn interesting words every day — and really understand how they’re used by seeing how they’ve been used in great books available in the Nookbooks Store. (And the app includes audio pronunciations, too!)

Interested? There’s more information here.

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Support Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Efforts

Over the past several days we’ve seen a significant increase in searches for tsunami and other earthquake-related terms on Wordnik. In light of that we’ve added a banner to the top of many of these pages linking to the American Red Cross donations page, and to the Google crisis response page, which has more detailed information about relief efforts. (The Google page also includes a form to donate directly to the Japanese Red Cross, to which Wordnik.com is making a donation.)

If you see additional words that do not have the banner that you’d like to suggest get the banner treatment, please leave a comment here … thank you!

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25,000 Lists!

Congratulations, Wordniks and Wordies! This week we passed 25,000 lists*!

What is a list? A list is just a collection of words that anyone with a Wordnik account can create. The words may be related or not, real or not, common or proper, single words or phrases. It’s really up to you.

At Wordnik, we like lists so much that we share one every day on Twitter — our List of the Day. With more than 25,000, we have a lot to choose from!

There are lists that are weather–related, color–related, or that make us hungry. There are lists that play with words, describe words, and have fun with sound. There are lists that bring back memories, celebrate a holiday or an author (like Shakespeare). There are lists that are sporty, sleepy, scary, or spicy; vegetable or animal; hot or cold; naughty, naughtier, and naughtiest.

The Community page shows you what other Wordniks are doing with their lists, as well as recent activity, such as words that have been recently listed, the latest lists, and the most-commented-on lists and words. You can also find recently viewed words, the latest comments, recent pronunciations, and recent favorites.

Now go and make your own list. We know you want to.

*Special thanks to mollusque for bringing this awesome stat to our attention.