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

35 points by sharmi ↗ HN
Consider that you are writing a blog post or an essay. No one will have all the words we need at the tip of the tongue at all times. So when you struggle to find the appropriate word, what resource do you use to find the appropriate word? There are more than one ways to find a specific word. One is where we know a related word and look for its synonym/antonym. For example the word 'beautiful' is so overused, you would like to use a synonymous word which is more exact. The other is finding a related word where we know the surrounding context and try to use the appropriate word for that context. For example "a ________ pupil" you might want to describe a person who is a perfect pupil disciplined and intelligent. So how do you go about this type of search?

Do most of your search fall into 'synonymous' type or 'related words' type?

55 comments

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ictebres
wordhippo.com has related words, other forms, opposite meanings and rhymes.. It's quite cool.
dandare
Not sure if this is what yo are looking for, but as a non native speaker, when I am not sure which word is appropriate in given context I will search the whole phrase. If it appears on obscure message boards then it is probably not what I the right word in the context, if it appears in ft.com then it is good to go. The quotation marks in the search are essential.
syllogism
Google books ngram counts are a slightly more precise way to do this. But yeah --- this is my standard way to explain to non-native speakers what works and what doesn't :)
koevet
I use a couple of thesaurus apps I have on my phone. If I'm in a hurry, I just google "[word] thesaurus".

Wordnik (https://www.wordnik.com/) is also a good resource to check how a word is used. Note that I'm not a native English speaker, hence these resources are super useful for me.

stuartleigh
Pretty much yeah, I look for common synonyms and related words.
jacquesm
I think you might want to look at a thesaurus.

http://www.thesaurus.com/

jobigoud
+1. That's what I do. I have a shortcut search so that I can simply type t <word> any time I need an alternative word.

It's not only useful for prose by the way. I sometimes use it to find the most appropriate name for a variable, function, API entry point, or for a small project.

pjf
I usually use www.thesaurus.com/browse/word
hayksaakian
i've gotten results by searching with many words to describe my intention into google

basically type the definition of the word you want, and google can find the actual word you're looking for.

ximeng
http://english.stackexchange.com/

Also Google define:test will give synonyms for test

E.g.

test1 test/Submit noun noun: test; plural noun: tests 1. a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use. "no sparking was visible during the tests" synonyms: trial, experiment, test case, case study, pilot study, trial run, tryout, dry run; More

Kiro
This is a problem I would like to see solved. I'm very often in situation where I have a word on my tongue but can't remember exactly what it is. I usually end up googling but sometimes it's not enough. It's hard to google on abstract things like this.
thecatspaw
I'll go to a translate tool, enter the word in my native language, and look at all the possible translations
Galrito
You can always ask someone you know how would they say it. Works most of the times when Google isn't there for me.
csl
I google for "define:word" to check for spelling, but a thesaurus is usually available in the drop down menu. Then I search words with similar meaning to find the word on the tip of my tongue.
olalonde
I sometimes start typing a part of the sentence in Google Search and see what comes up in the auto-complete.
teamhappy
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 ...

sharmi
grammar-girl is an informative resource and I can forsee myself spending hours :). How do you use the ngrams?
sarreph
I always use spotlight search on mac [CMD+SPACE], which returns a dictionary result in the list of options from what you type.

From there, I open the dictionary app and check the thesaurus.

I seldom need any other sources that what is already on my Mac :)

amelius
It is kind of interesting that people actually need to look for synonymous words, because if you have one word that describes what you want to express, why do you need another word for it?

Well, it seems that when writing English prose, it is considered bad style to use the same word more than once in a paragraph, and the offense becomes greater when using the word more often. This "rule" is, from a logical standpoint, of course complete nonsense, but nevertheless it exists.

So, this makes me wonder, can't we write a program that automatically "synonymizes" a text, and thus fixes any problems with this style rule?

DanBC
> So, this makes me wonder, can't we write a program that automatically "synonymizes" a text, and thus fixes any problems with this style rule?

Write this then run some well know writing through it, and put it in a blog.

The absurdist prose that results would be amazing.

Fiahil
This rule is not constrained only to english, it happens to exist in french too (and probably other languages).

Also, reading well written texts is supposed to expand your vocabulary and understanding of the language. How's thats suppose to work is someone is hammering the same words over and over again?

rahimnathwani
"It is kind of interesting that people actually need to look for synonymous words, because if you have one word that describes what you want to express, why do you need another word for it?"

Perhaps there's a word which more elegantly and accurately conveys your meaning, but which isn't on the tip of your tongue.

dfc
I don't think this once per paragraph rule is much of a rule. It might be a useful for adjectives and adverbs but that is it.

PS synonymous words = synonyms

Symbiote
Because the words aren't exactly synonymous, and different words have subtly different meanings.
pjc50
It's not so much a hard rule as a "lint" warning for your language. If you're reusing the same adjective, either you're failing to distinguish between things or you should just delete subsequent uses of the adjective. For nouns, consider using "it".

Doing the opposite correctly is a powerful rhetorical technique: "by the people, of the people, and for the people".

spacecowboy_lon
You don't think that over using the same word in close proximity jars and just looks clunky.
lindig
Most innovative service I know: http://www.netspeak.org. It does exactly what the article talks about: offering a word by filling a hole in a sentence or phrase.
sharmi
That was most useful! Thank you very much.
sharmi
How often do you use it? Do you find it useful for your purpose?
atmosx
OSX's dictionary is quite awesome actually. I use that mostly and might also use Google.
wwkeyboard
I use this almost daily when I name a variable or function. It's useful to look for a more precise noun or verb, or see if they have other connotations.
judofyr
I use TheFreeDictionary a lot. Just type "tfd.com/<word>" and it gives you multiple definitions from different dictionaries. Example: http://tfd.com/intelligent
hiacc
My vote goes to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ or http://www.tfd.com/ for short. Check out the http://www.tfd.com/beautiful example
sharmi
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?
hiacc
That's precisely why I like it ;) Tfd seems to aggregate many dictionaries. It's quite helpful with some specific fields like medicine.
impostervt
I had this problem when I was trying to figure out good domain names. It's one of the reasons I ended up building this side project. It shows synonyms, but also related words, other types of that words, words that rhyme, derivatives, etc.

https://www.wordsapi.com

Nr7
For a non-native English speaker, like myself, it's easy to just use a translator app or website to come up with synonyms to a word I'm looking for.
Nr7
As an interesting sidenote, the more I use English everyday the more I find the myself doing the opposite. Struggling to figure out a proper translation in my native language to an English word.
thomasfoster96
If I can't get a suggestion from DuckDuckGo or Google's instant answers, lately I've been going to Wiktionary. Surprisingly comprehensive, given I thought it was a neglected Wikipedia spinoff.

On a side note, Wiktionary would be 10x as useful if it was structured somehow, rather than being strictly formatted text.

veli_joza
English is my second language so I need this often. I either use wiktionary, or google translate. In translated text you can click the word to get alternate translations that will point you in the right direction.