Get The Meaning Of Words Using Online Resources |Chalk Talk PH

5 Resources That Help You Answer “What’s That Word?”

1. Bernstein’s Reverse Dictionary

This book by language maven Theodore M. Bernstein has not been updated in nearly forty years, so unless you find a copy at a used-book store (online or on a street), you’ll have to search the Web for a site that enables you to download it for free. (Registration may be required.) But you might find the effort worthwhile. Bernstein’s book, which was revised and expanded in 1988 by David Grambs, editor of the second edition of the Random House Unabridged Dictionary three decades after the reverse dictionary’s original publication, is alphabetized by the keyword of a definition for the word you’re looking for and keywords are cross referenced.

For example, what’s that word for when you elbow somebody in a crowd? Look up “crowd roughly,” push, “shake up,” or shove, and you’ll find that word or phrase followed by its fellow definitions, plus jostle in boldface type. There’s also a reverse index, listing what are called the target words and the numbers of the pages on which you’ll find those entries.

2. OneLook Reverse Dictionary

This online tool helps you find a word for which you know the definition but not the term itself, generate a list of related terms or concepts, or find the answers to simple factual questions. You can also find words by typing in the letters you know it contains.

The parent website’s home page has a dictionary search that lets you look up words and phrases starting or ending with one or more letters, words that start or end with certain letters and have a specific number of letters between them, or phrases that include a certain word. In addition, you can look up a word that starts with certain letters and is related in meaning to another specific word or is a certain part of speech.

3. Random House Webster’s Word Menu

This book, like Bernstein’s Reverse Dictionary, may be available only as a used book or a download, but it’s an excellent resource for those who like to flip pages rather than tap a keyboard to find what they’re looking for. Much like the original Roget’s Thesaurus, it is organized alphabetically by concept rather than discrete words.

For example, to find that word for a warm, dry wind that blows down a mountainside, go to Part One—Nature, then to Chapter 3—Earth, where you’ll find the section titled “Weather and Natural Phenomena.” Under the subsection “Winds,” skim the one and a half columns of terms associated with winds, followed by brief definitions, until you come to “foehn: warm, dry wind blowing down mountainside.” There are more than 850 pages of entries, each with dozens of terms categorized to an intricate level of detail.

4. Sisson’s Word and Expression Locator

This resource is also out of print, but you can find it online. Its approach is to alphabetically list common words with entries that include synonyms or related words. For example, under courage, you’ll find a list of ten adjectives (starting with audacious) and thirteen nouns (beginning with audacity), plus an associated verb (muster, often paired with the target word in the phrase “muster courage”).

But that’s only the starting point. Some entries also list combining forms; for example, under facial, you’ll find -hedron, the suffix for terms for multifaceted geometrical shapes (such as an octahedron). Others list fields of study associated with the term: Under old, you’ll find geriatrics, gerontology, and nostology. And what are words associated, for example, with suffer? Try calvary, Gethsemane, hell, inferno, or purgatory (though the first choice should be capitalized, and purgatory is capitalized in religious contexts, as hell sometimes is). And under assist, in addition to lists of adjectives, nouns, and verbs, a list of synonyms for assistant is offered. An index features lists of words alphabetically organized within categories such as “Actions and Events” and “People and the Social World.”

5. Tip of My Tongue

This basic word finder features multiple routes to success: four areas with three fields each to enter what you do know about an evasive word. The first area lets you type in one or more letters: the start of a word, a letter (or a sequence of them) that you know is in there somewhere, or the end of the word. The second section enables you to type in a scrambled word or any letters you know the word contains or doesn’t contain, and a third has fields in which you can enter synonyms to narrow your search. The final area lets you refine your search to words of a minimum or maximum length or words that sound like another word. Filling in at least one field will result in a list of words and their meanings that meet your criteria.

            Below is a list of other online resources that can improve your grammar and word choice in writing:

Online Dictionaries
Oxford Learner’s Dictionary	http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/	a dictionary for language learners with simple word definitions and examples of use
Longman Dictionary	http://www.ldoceonline.com/	another learner's dictionary
OZdic	http://www.ozdic.com/	a collocation dictionary, which shows other words that are commonly used with a target word
Word Reference	http://www.wordreference.com/	a bilingual dictionary, which provides translations of English words into other languages
Cambridge Dictionary	http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/	a combination of a learner's and bilingual dictionary
Possible uses: check which part of speech a given word is, what grammatical structure follows a reporting verb (e.g. suggest), and how a word is used in context.

 

Phrase List
Academic Phrasebank	http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/	a collection of phrases commonly used for writing research papers theses and dissertations. A great resource especially for graduate writers.
Possible uses: discover which phrases are commonly used in different parts of research papers (e.g. introductions, method sections, discussions, conclusions) or how you can describe trends and graphs or define terms.

 

Corpora A corpus (pl. corpora) is a large collection of texts. Using a search box, writers can see how a particular word or phrase is used in context by examining multiple sentences.
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)	http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/	a corpus that allows users to search for words and phrases and provides a great number of examples
COCA Word and Phrase	https://www.wordandphrase.info/frequencyList.asp	despite its name Word and Phrase, this corpus lets users search for words only. It displays fewer examples than the corpus mentioned above, but at the same time, it is more detailed. COCA Word and Phrase provides definitions, collocations, and synonyms for the target word, and writers can also see in which registers (e.g. spoken or academic) the word is used more commonly.
Possible uses: see how a new word you learned or a specific grammatical construction is used in context to avoid usage mistakes, and identify whether a certain word is appropriate for academic writing.

 

Online Writing Evaluation Tools
Grammarly	https://www.grammarly.com/	These free online tools allow users to check their texts for grammar, words choice, stylistic, and punctuation mistakes. Writers can copy and paste their papers in one of the tools, and the website will identify some sentence-level issues and provide suggestions about the ways to fix them. While using these tools, however, it is important to remember that they might not be completely accurate in some cases, so writers should evaluate suggestions critically.
PaperRater	https://www.paperrater.com/
Language Tool	http://www.languagetool.org/
Grammark	https://grammark.org/dist/#/
Spellchecker Plus	https://spellcheckplus.com/
Possible uses: before submitting your paper or going to the Writing Center, run your paper through one or two online writing evaluation tools mentioned above. They will help you notice some typos or simple grammatical mistakes that you can fix on your own.

Sources: Retrieved at https://www.dailywritingtips.com/5-resources-that-help-you-answer-whats-that-word/

Retrieved at https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/guides/online-resources-for-improving-grammar-and-word-choice-in-writing