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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:
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Online Dictionaries |
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Oxford Learner’s
Dictionary |
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/ |
a dictionary for
language learners with simple word definitions and examples of use |
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Longman Dictionary |
http://www.ldoceonline.com/ |
another learner's
dictionary |
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OZdic |
http://www.ozdic.com/ |
a collocation
dictionary, which shows other words that are commonly used with a target word |
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Word Reference |
http://www.wordreference.com/ |
a bilingual
dictionary, which provides translations of English words into other languages |
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Cambridge
Dictionary |
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/ |
a combination of a
learner's and bilingual dictionary |
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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. |
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Phrase List |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Online Writing Evaluation Tools |
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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. |
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PaperRater |
https://www.paperrater.com/ |
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Language Tool |
http://www.languagetool.org/ |
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Grammark |
https://grammark.org/dist/#/ |
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Spellchecker Plus |
https://spellcheckplus.com/ |
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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. |
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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
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