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Wolfram|Alpha is a great resource for writers. It has an enormous words and linguistics database that writers can use for such things as word definitions, origins, synonyms, hyphenation, and Soundex lookups.
Type “word contest”, and Wolfram|Alpha will retrieve the word data for the English word “contest”. The results tell you many definitions of the word, that its first known recorded use was in 1603, that it rhymes with “conquest”, and a wealth of other data on just that word.
Wolfram|Alpha also features tools that can calculate and find anagrams, word patterns, and transliterations. You can also search for words with specific letter strings. For example, enter “words ending in ation” and Wolfram|Alpha will show you all 1148 words in its dictionary that fit this criteria.
What are some ways you have integrated Wolfram|Alpha into your writing process? Share your examples in this thread at the Wolfram|Alpha Community.
Wolfram|Alpha clearly knows the word “remora”:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=word+remora
However, when I enter “words ending in mora,” “remora” doesn’t appear in the results list:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=words+ending+in+mora
Please explain why this is happening.
Wolfram Alpha most likely has words parsed into their morphemes and cross-indexed, and finds suffix lists via that rather than performing a true literal string comparison search – which would thus imply that “re” & “mora” is not a correct reduction of its morphemes, in contrast to the other words which do show up as having a suffix of “mora”.
I don’t think so. Both “words ending in twork” and “words ending it work” both find the word “network.” Yet “words ending in ora” still doesn’t give me “remora.” I hypothesized that “remora” is excluded because it is uncommon. However, a list of “words ending with ora” includes “anaphora.” Google searches for “anaphora” and “remora” yield 552,000 and 1,200,000 results respectively. (On the other hand, Google Chrome thinks that “remora” in this text box is a misspelled word while “anaphora” is acceptable. Go figure.)
Single word Anagrams works like a charm, however multiple words are not handled:
eleven plus two = twelve plus one
William Shakespeare = I am a weakish speller
More @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagram
Please consider adding plural forms of words. eg “plural of cat” should return “cats”; “plural of cactus” should return “cactii”; etc.
Kind of a shame that “verbs rhyming with duck” does not compute … just joking, but it would help if you can search a subset of words, such as “adjectives ending in nous” or “synonyms for excellent and ending in ous”
Lets try posting this again.
Writing is not all words, its also understanding sentence structure for rewriting.
I would love W/A able to do NPL parsing like the following:
SentenceParse[“Jack runs up the hill towards Jill”]
returning:
1. Part of Speech at word, clause, and etc.. and syntax level
2. diagram of structure of the sentence, as a classic tree (as a mma code!)
One Question: Which database does W/A use for the origin of the words.
http://www34.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=and&a=*C.and-_*Word-
The word “and”‘s first recorded use is 1900? That’s very unlikely.
Simon,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are checking it out!
Thank you!
Then there’s the community center – where folks could teach and take classes, cook together, eat together – and essentially plan whatever they dream up. I think the internet is useful for keeping everyone organized. A
This is really nice, but there’s something I think you should consider as an addition: allowing the entry of, for instance, “words starting with c and ending with a”, instead of doing something like “words ending with a” and then look for something that starts with c.
Because what Wolfram Alpha does is consider words that start with “c and ending with a” which by itself is a set of words.
Thanks in advance 🙂
J,
Thank you for the suggestion! Our team will look into this further.
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