Swiss Army Knife of Dictionaries

By Jason Boog 

wordnik.jpgA new website will give dictionaries some serious competition this year. Wordnik combines the dictionary, thesaurus, Twitter, Scrabble, Flickr, word-clouds, tags, and social networking in one amazingly-simple page.

Check out the definition of “lovely,” this editor’s favorite word. Wordnik finds the definition, synonyms, antonyms, a usage example from Frances Hodgson Burnett Flickr photos tagged with the word, the Scrabble point count, and one Twitter user’s post about a lovely lunch they recently enjoyed with a friend.

The site currently contains 1.7 million words, and users are starting to tag words–making the search more sophisticated. “Lovely” has been looked up 21 times, making this editor wonder about the general uniqueness of his word choices. (Via Norton Fiction)