
How can you learn a word without knowing the words within its definition? - dictionaryfeed
When I lookup the definition of a word, there is often a word in the definition that I don&#x27;t know. This forces me to either navigate away from the definition that I&#x27;m currently looking at or open up a new tab in my web browser.
This is a very minor problem. But it is well defined and it bothers me. I decided to make my best effort to solve this problem by making my own online dictionary that automatically provides the definitions for words within the definition.<p>See here:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;treegle.xyz&#x2F;define.php?w=querulous<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;treegle.xyz&#x2F;define.php?w=consummation<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;treegle.xyz&#x2F;define.php?w=incorporeality<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;treegle.xyz&#x2F;define.php?w=tetrabranchiata<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;treegle.xyz&#x2F;define.php?w=endoderm
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lioeters
This is a great idea, and I love how you implemented it so that a definition
can be broken down into its component words' definitions (and so on..) - and
that I can study the whole tree of meanings in one view. It makes sense
visually and mentally.

As a funny aside, the few times that I tried to follow all the way down - like
a child asking "why?" repeatedly, asking for the meaning of every word and its
definitions - I ended up at the word "being".

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dictionaryfeed
Thank you so much for the kind comment! I really appreciate it. Yes, it is fun
to just keep clicking and see where it goes.

I actually did some ranking to measure the connectivity of words in the
dictionary that I used. I made this little word cloud to show off the most
highly connective non-trivial words:
[https://imgur.com/iqJ1Iwb](https://imgur.com/iqJ1Iwb)

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lioeters
Fascinating.. Looking at the visualization of "highly connective words", my
mind automatically tried to find some pattern or sense in those particular
words - why are they the most connective? Does it mean that there are the most
number of definitions that contain (and are related to) these words? I wonder
if that signifies something about the "culture" of the English language, what
people most often think/talk about when using it (edit: cats apparently! :).

As a side note, something that struck me when I first visited treegle.xyz, was
that the definition of "quarrel" included the word "etc." in it:

 _quarrel - a small opening in window tracery, of which the cusps, etc., make
the form nearly square_

The use of this "etc." bugs me for some reason: it seems to assume that the
reader knows how a window tracery is built, and the word adds no value to the
definition - and makes me wonder what components other than "cusps" they
meant.

Anyway, wonderful experiment (and project name too).

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dictionaryfeed
Thank you again! I really appreciate all of your thoughtful feedback.

Yeah, one way of measuring connectivity is counting how many definitions that
a word appears in. Also, yeah, sometimes there are text artifacts in
definitions and words, phrases, or abbreviations that don't add any value to
the definition.

From research that I've done, this happens in online dictionaries (not often,
but occasionally). I've done a lot of work to clean up the definitions in my
dictionary and provide the top ranking definitions first, but some artifacts
still slip through the cracks.

I really appreciate all of your great feedback and welcome any comments or
discussion anytime! :)

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aminozuur
Wordo allows users to click every word in the definition, try it here:
[https://wordo.co/querulous](https://wordo.co/querulous)

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dictionaryfeed
Cool!! Thank you very much for sharing!! I actually never heard of Wordo until
now. Do you work with Wordo? If so, wanta collaborate? :)

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aminozuur
Yes I helped create Wordo. I am nerdy about words and definitions. I
contribute to Wiktionary.

I'd like to collaborate, not sure how but lets get in touch!! Add me on FB or
Twitter: [https://facebook.com/eftegarie](https://facebook.com/eftegarie)
[https://twitter.com/aminozuur](https://twitter.com/aminozuur)

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auganov
Very cool! Should try to pick the relevant definition when there's many
though. Even your very first example gives the wrong one for quarrel, you need
to click through 7 definitions before you get the right one.

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dictionaryfeed
Thank you very much for the feedback!

So I actually talked with a dictionary expert that was a developer for
WordNet. He told me that he spent tons of time trying to determine which
definition is the right one. He came to the conclusion that dictionary authors
quite often disagree on the ordering of definitions and that it is a lost
cause to try to rank definitions.

I disagreed with him though. I think that definition form, word usage within
the definition, and definition popularity can all contribute to selecting a
"right one". That's why I applied statistical techniques to rank the
definitions and reorder them to hopefully put the "right one" first.

Sadly, it seems that I didn't do such a great job for you with the word
"quarrel".

Feedback noted as this will help when I start collecting data from users and
make a push to improve my statistical analysis.

Thank you again and please let me know if you would like to discuss this
further with me. Hope all is well. :)

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wingerlang
I had the same issue as the other commenter. I also didn't quite understand
the "word (1/15)" as it looked like there were around 15 words in the
definition to begin with. Maybe you should just show all of them, vertically,
until the user selects a new one.

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dictionaryfeed
Thank you very much for the follow-up reply in regards to this! The worst
definition that I've found is if you search the word "hello".

However, I actually like the first definition of the word "word" quite a bit.
This demonstrates that there are differences from person to person.

Bringing this difference to attention, you're right, it would make sense if
there was a button to click to just expand all of the definition at once.

Further, when a user selects one of them, I could record that data and
incorporate user's preference of definition into my statistical analysis to
provide better definitions and better orderings.

I really appreciate your feedback and if you would ever like to discuss
further, please let me know! :)

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selckin
Didn't figure out you can click more then the blue words until I read comments
here

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dictionaryfeed
Thank you for your feedback! Yes, that is an issue that I've heard many times.
I've tried to solve it many different ways.

The issue is that the definition has to be readable while also conveying that
the words are clickable without just adding a comment that says all these
words are clickable.

I found that making some of the words look like buttons often conveys that
those words are clickable and as you accidentally hover over other words, you
detect that all of them are clickable.

Any ideas on how to solve this issue are greatly appreciated! If you would
ever like to chat about this, please let me know. Hope that you have a great
day!

