Wordsmyth Blog

Tag: thesaurus

  • Wordsmyth Features: Lookup History

    The Lookup History feature records every dictionary entry a user has recently looked up. Going back through your recent Wordsmyth searches is a great way to keep track of words you’ve learned or inquired about. Forget what a word means? Know the definition but not the word? Check your Lookup History!

    View Lookup History

    You can access your Lookup History from the “My Wordsmyth” menu. To view your Lookup History from a dictionary entry:

    1. In the Lookup History box on the right-hand side of the screen, you will see the last five words you’ve looked up.
    2. Click “See more” at the bottom of the  “Lookup History” box.

    Lookup Search Features

    To make finding old lookups easier, Wordsmyth offers search methods. You can search for words you’ve looked up by checking your searches during a specific time period, looking for the word itself, or finding words you’ve looked up on a specific date.

    Search By Time Period

    You can review your Lookup History over a period of one day, one week, or one month, as well as over your entire search history. If you’d like to browse words you’ve searched over the past week:

    1. Go to “Show words looked up” and click the dropdown menu
    2. Click “last 7 days”
    3. Click “Find”

    Search By Word

    To search for a specific word you’ve looked up:

    1. Go to the “Find a word or date” search bar at the top of the “Look-up History” screen.
    2. Type in a word.
    3. Click “Find.”
    4. The specific word will appear alphabetically in a list of your recently searched words.

    Search By Date

    If you’re looking for words you’d looked up on a specific date:

    1. Enter the date you’d like to search in a month/day/year format (i.e. 05/15/19) in the “Find a word or date” search bar.
    2. Click “Find”
    3. The words looked up on the date you entered will be displayed in the list below.

    Words searched by date are displayed in descending order.

    Clear Lookup History

    When you use the dictionary frequently, you will accumulate searched entries quickly. This makes finding old searches difficult, so it’s helpful to clear your Lookup History sometimes. To do so, click the [Clear] link on the right side of the screen.

    To get started, check out our tutorial video!

    All registered users have access to their Lookup History and search tools. But a free registration only goes so far. Subscribers can search their entire Lookup History at any time. Why not subscribe and make the most out of your Wordsmyth account?

    Want to keep up with all things Wordsmyth? Check out our Facebook, Twitter, and blog. Get in touch with us on our feedback page if you have any questions or concerns.

    Until next time, Happy Wordsmything!

  • Wordsmyth Features: Search Filters

    Wordsmyth Dictionary’s Search Filters focus your dictionary search using specific search parameters. Using Search Filters, you can search through all of Wordsmyth’s assets, including:

    • Entries with images or animations
    • Entries with attached Word Histories, Language Notes, Word Builder features, or Word Parts (roots and affixes)
    • Homophone entries
    • Words of particular parts of speech
    • Word Explorer categories
    • Words at a particular Wordsmyth Vocabulary Inventory (WVI) level
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  • Wordsmyth Features: Display Options

    The Display Options menu shows and hides different features in Wordsmyth’s dictionary entry display. This menu is available at the top of every entry and can be used to make changes at any time. 

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  • Wordsmyth Features: Entry Display

    Wordsmyth Dictionary’s entry display menu contains enhanced browsing and word learning features. These integrated features let users choose what information to include in their dictionary entries. The entry display menu also manages your lookup history and enables support features. All of these tools are located at the top of each dictionary entry.

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  • Building chunks of language with Word Combinations

    Wordsmyth’s Word Combinations, technically known as “collocations,” provide what is almost like a thesaurus in another dimension. You will find them in most entries in the Advanced Dictionary. Instead of listing synonyms, that is, words you might use instead of the word you are using, Word Combinations provide words to use with the word you are using. In other words, they help you start building a bigger chunk of a sentence.

    Compare the thesaurus’s “similar words” for the verb “laugh”:

    cackle, chortle, chuckle, giggle, guffaw, howl, snicker, snigger, tee-hee, titter…

    …with the Word Combination adverbs for the verb “laugh”:

    aloud, appreciatively, bitterly, derisively, good-naturedly, harshly, heartily, hysterically, loud, loudly, maniacally, nervously, outright, raucously, ruefully, scornfully, softly, uncontrollably, uneasily, uproariously 

     

    The similar words allow you to choose from among words for more specific kinds of laugh: from a quiet titter to a hearty guffaw. The Word Combinations allow you to choose from among adverbs that writers frequently use to modify the verb “laugh.” “Ashley laughed uneasily at the cruel joke,” you might write. Or, “Ashley laughed good-naturedly when her error was pointed out.” (Ashley’s a likable person, evidently.)

     

    Word Combinations are the most frequent companions of the headword in published writing and broadcast speech. Thus, they represent the many ways in which the headword-concept is typically talked about and the words typically used to talk about them.

    In the entries, word combinations are organized by part of speech combination. Take, for example, the word “election.” The word combinations for the noun “election” fall into four kinds:

    adjective + (n.) election

    verb + (n.) election 

    (n.) election + verb   

    noun + (n.) election

    These formulas show you the kind of word (part of speech) and the position (before or after “election”) in which it appears in the corpus of texts. Notice that “election” has some verbs that appear before it and some that appear after it. Here are the full word combinations entries, with some comments in red:

     

    adjective + (n.)election     coming, competitive, congressional, contested, democratic, direct, disputed, fair, federal, forthcoming, fraudulent, free, general, gubernatorial, judicial, legislative, local, mayoral, mid-term, multi-party, multiracial, municipal, nationwide, nonpartisan, off-year, parliamentary, periodic, presidential, primary, provincial, scheduled, statewide, transitional, upcoming

     

    verb + (n.)election     boycott, cancel, certify, contest, delay, disrupt, influence, hold, monitor, oversee, overturn, postpone, precede, rig, schedule, steal, supervise  (These verbs that frequently have the word “election” as their object will give you a glimpse at all the things we can do to an election. )

     

    (n.)election + verb      loom, near
    (Which of these two verbs would you choose to talk about a coming election? It really depends how you feel about it.)

     

    noun + (n.)election   ballot, boycott, candidate, eve, fall, financing, landslide, legitimacy, midterm, month, outcome, poll, primary, recall, registration, round, run-up, runoff, turnout, vote, voting

     

    If you have read through these words, you may have noticed that some make sense when placed immediately before or after the headword “election”: “a fair election,” “postponed the election,” and “a fall [i.e., autumn] election.” True, you have to insert an article, “the” between “postpone” and “election,” but generally these are recognizable phrases that make sense.

     

    Others, especially in the noun+noun category, don’t seem like a chunk of a sentence: “legitimacy election” and “voting election,” for example. Often a preposition will need to be inserted between the words: “the legitimacy of the election,” “voting in this election” are some possible ways the word combinations will work in these cases.
    If you don’t know how to fit the two words together, a Google search on the two words will often return a number of similar examples of how they do.

     

    You can try this little exercise to get a feel for how to fill out a word combination:

     

    Complete these common noun + noun word combinations with the correct prepositions and articles.

    1. the eve   ____    ____   election
    2. the outcome  ____    ____   election
    3. the turnout   ____    ____   election

     

     Word Combinations is a subscription feature, but you can try it by signing up for a 15-day free Trial Subscription, no strings attached. (There is a Trial Subscription button on most pages of the Wordsmyth website.) We also include Word Combinations with many Academic Vocabulary of the Day posts.

     

    Read more about collocations here.