ResearchBuzz

A big thanks to reader JS who pointed me toward WordNik, which looks like it’s been open a bit over a month. WordNik, at http://www.wordnik.com/, lets you search for words and get huge chunks of information about them. It’s in beta, which no longer shocks me.

From the front page, enter a word. Any word. I entered solder because it’s been a weird week. WordNik responded with lots of things, crammed onto one page.

There’s a set of definitions from various sources. There’s a few examples of the word used in a sentence. In this example there were a couple of real-time examples from Twitter. (Okay, Twitter is officially in everything. It’s the Huy Fong sriracha of the Internet.) You get synonyms and antonyms but also which words are used in the same context — invaluable for search engine queries.

You get images from Flickr. You get anagrams, if there are any. You get a chart of how frequently the word’s used. (I had a question about how that chart was being made; someone at WordNik pointed me toward http://blog.wordnik.com/carbonated-frequencies which answered my questions. The technique is not perfect but the charts are interesting.)

Though all this information is on the front page, you can also get to it via tabs across the top. In some cases you’ll get more iterations of data, like more example sentences or Twitter references.

As a writer I love all the reference information provided here, and from such a wide variety of sources! But as a searcher I really love the section that shows words that are used in the same context. When I have a query — especially a technical query or one focused on a very specific topic — this’ll be invaluable to help me narrow down my search results. Three cheers — go check out WordNik.

Merriam-Webster has updated its Collegiate Dictionary with about 100 new words. Some of these words can keep your search results more recent though others of them are actually pretty old and have just made it into the dictionary (“zip line?” REALLY?) You can get 25 of the new words at http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords09.htm.

This list is a mix of the old (earmark, fan fiction, zip line), the new (locavore, staycation, webisode), and the new-to-me-but according-to-the-dictionary-it’s-been-around-a-long-time (frenemy, pharmacogenetics).

To get a sense of how these newer words can impact a search, do some experiments. Try searching for staycation and vacation and see how the tenor of the results changes. I did a search for frenemy -dictionary on Google News (I included the -dictionary part to avoid all the stories about how frenemy was now in the dictionary) and was surprised how often the word turned up in plot summaries and stories about TV shows. Editorial writers like Maureen Dowd seem to use it ironically. News writers often used it in quotes (appropriate now that it’s in the dictionary?) Frenemy has a distinct usage that will change your search results.

webisode -dictionary, on the other hand, brought a range of results from advertising to music to more local productions. I thought I was going to get a bunch of results about slick online endeavors and that wasn’t the case at all.

I’m always glad to hear about these new word releases, because they expand my search toolkit. Do some experiments with these newly-official words and see what they can do for your search results.