Wanted: A Smarter Thesaurus
The old thesaurus model is no longer adequate. The world needs better thesauri.
When writing songs and blog posts, I am always on the hunt for the exact right words. Often I head to a thesaurus because I can’t remember the precise word for the concept I’m thinking of. The problem is that usually the thesaurus doesn’t give me the word I’m searching for, so I have to search lots of different words until I finally (hopefully) get that word that has been eluding me. I need a thesaurus that can accept multiple words and kick back a list of possibilities that are “averaged equivalents” of those words.
Example
Maybe these are bad examples, but it could work something like this:
- eager + emotional = anxious, nervous, tense
- qualify + judge = evaluate, estimate, rank, choose
- orange + pink = salmon, grapefruit, coral
Other possible features
- Input more than two words for averaging
- Omit or limit to certain attributes, topics, languages, etc.
- Select language difficulty range (e.g. low, medium, high)
Does something like this already exist? If not, does anyone have the desire and/or know-how to build one? Google, I know you’re indexing this, but are you reading it?
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