HN Explorer

Ask HN: What do you think about this idea, Queryable Words

1 points by the1plummie ↗ HN
I have an idea for a side project for a month now, wanted to get some feedback before I set out to coding. I want to create a tool where you can query English words, so for example, if your query is: fruits that are 5 letters, then you'll get words like apple, mango, etc. I also imagine this tool would be crowd sourced so that database would be updated constantly.

Other queryable features might include part of speech, number of syllables, language of origin, what it rhymes with, what letter it starts with, synonyms. Do you guys think this would be useful? Any suggestions? Thanks folks.

4 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 20.1 ms ] thread
conroy
Putting together the list of words might prove to be difficult, as there infinite categories (British golfers with first names that are 5 letters). Also, you're going to be competing against content farms. For example, an answer to your first query can be found here: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Fruit_with_5_letters.

My advice? Write a nice API around the Wikitionary API http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php

the1plummie
Yep, I am thinking about getting data that way.
Felix21
Solutions looking for problems never end well.

You can do it to practice your coding skills tho! Its cool, but not very useful IMHO.

the1plummie
Well the reason I have this idea is that couple of my friends have asked me about naming (company and product) and the process of coming up with words is pretty tedious. I thought this tool would make it easier for that. So I guess that would be the first use case I have in mind :)