Comments on: Exploding word associations

Exploding word associations

Burhanistan — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:45:09 -0800

Visuwords - an online graphical dictionary that uses Princeton's WordNet. Input a word and watch the branching associations.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:24:39 -0800

i just entered "george w bush" and it's a total blank

By: davejay

davejay — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:24:53 -0800

Oddly, no entry for eponysterical. this is good, though.

By: davejay

davejay — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:27:30 -0800

After a bit more interaction, as much as I liked this, I wish it went into the etymology of the words instead of just the definitions.

By: Samuel Farrow

Samuel Farrow — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:04:12 -0800

After two attempts I got bored and started to look up rude words, like bottom, which was associated with fanny. What a wonderful age of understanding we live in huh.

By: mattoxic

mattoxic — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:16:29 -0800

I wish it went into the etymology Amen to that. I think the funky flash interface could have been replaced with a list.

By: dhruva

dhruva — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:18:56 -0800

I looked up the word 'set' which reportedly has the most number of meanings in the English language, and the result was pleasantly complicated.

By: bhouston

bhouston — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:22:25 -0800

It appears to be an updated version of the now classic "Visual Thesaurus" and based on the same dataset.

By: reflection

reflection — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:39:02 -0800

It's a graphical interface for WordNet, and not intended to be any of those things being complained about. The researchers who develop WordNet have very sophisticated tools that are far too complicated for most people to use. This makes WordNet's groundbreaking painstakingly created insights into lexical semantics available to the public.

By: chuckdarwin

chuckdarwin — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:54:43 -0800

How's this for an opinion: It's pretty, but it sucks.

By: syzygy

syzygy — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:19:22 -0800

Pretty interesting interface - probably an especially helpful tool for non-native English speakers. I emailed a link to my German-speaking girlfriend, who's studying translation, Italian and English.

By: humblepigeon

humblepigeon — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:48:31 -0800

Works best with verbs.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 05:35:30 -0800

Love it, thanks Burhanistan. Enjoyable data visualisation is life changing in many ways, some subtle, some simple. I like seeing a word connections grouped in a cloud. Yes, etymologies would be a nice improvement. At the bottom of the page it says "developed by Paul R. Dunn". However, according to his, maneri3102, delicious entry: "Visuwords Dictionary and Thesaurus - Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. This is my latest project still in development. More to follow shortly."

By: Uther Bentrazor

Uther Bentrazor — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 05:50:42 -0800

I think I did it wrong.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:33:13 -0800

A funny thing happened when I clicked the link; the word that came up on display was orthogonality.

By: talitha_kumi

talitha_kumi — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:48:59 -0800

I played with it for a little while, but within minutes I was ignoring the words themselves and instead played newton's cradle by jiggling the balls around and watching them interact with each other in elastic fashion. Maybe I'm a little too immature for the internets?

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:54:24 -0800

No one is too immature for the intertoobz, poopy-head!

By: Pecinpah

Pecinpah — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:51:52 -0800

This is cool as shit. Etymology would be nice, sure, but this is pretty amazing just the same. Thanks!

By: msali

msali — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:18:42 -0800

I fall into the "cool as shit" crowd, meself. I don't care about the absence of etymology - this is my new favorite website. I agree, it is probably most useful to non-native speakers learning the language.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:23:27 -0800

How's this for an opinion: It's pretty, but it sucks. You know what they say about everyone having opinions... You can also try qualifying your opinion a bit if you're going to crap in a thread.

By: Emredi

Emredi — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:55:19 -0800

I think this is pretty cool. I may show this to my 4th and 5th grade remedial reading students this afternoon, plugging in their vocabulary words for the week and discussing the connections. I have several English language learners who would probably enjoy this.