visual vocabulary

ooh ooh ooh i officially have a new favorite webpage/tool/time-drainer! i’ve discovered a fantastic new site called Visuwords™ that has provided the most wicked word-fun this vocabulary geek has had in a long time.

the application is a linguistic interface that is more than a dictionary, more than a thesaurus, it is a virtual neural network of the English language. just type in any word and the screen springs to life with an interactive diagram that quivers with life. while not comprehensive in its collection (an entry of “olio” returned no map), it is thorough in its explanation (words are identified by relationship and part-of-speech, with an extensive color-coded key). i entered “language” and was rewarded with a bouncing burst of definitions, synonyms, and derivatives.

Visuwords™ uses the concepts and technology of natural language processing that i studied though the computational linguistics course i completed, so i am especially intrigued. this website is the best thing to happen to lexical databases since WordNet, and certainly a triumph for champions of expanding one’s vocabulary and enhancing communication.