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The world of words
Written by Narmad
I rarely use my Oxford English dictionary, Thesaurus, or similar guides. Now I can clarify my doubts on the Internet with a few clicks. Being a content writer, I come across a lot of new words almost every day. However, I need to be careful with the correct usage of words. Since I compose my blogs from my Samsung NC20 very often, it is important to have an online tool to guide me with the confusables. With many such tools online, it is important to choose the right one for your needs. Check out Wordnik here.
Wordnik is an online interactive service based on the principle that people learn new words fast by seeing them in the context used. Wordnik is a combination of dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia. Since it is a cloud application, it comes with features, which we normally don’t find in other online dictionaries.
Wordnik is a rich repository of 4 billion words taken from various web pages, books, magazines and newspapers. Meaning of the words in Wordnik are taken from well known dictionaries like ‘The American Heritage 4E’, ‘The Century Dictionary’, ‘The GNU Cide Dictionary of English’ and ‘Wordnet’. The thesaurus in Wordnik is retrieved from ‘The Rogets II International’ and ‘Allen’s Synonyms and Antonyms’.
The creator of Wordnik claims that Wordnik does not function as a traditional online website as it fetches more than the meaning of a word. To check this out, I went ahead and signed up with Wordnik, which took only a few seconds to complete.
The home page of Wordnik looks like a search engine with the search box at the center of the screen.
When I entered the word ‘juxtaposed’ in the Wordnik search box, it directed me to a new page, which analyzed the word in different aspects rather than just the literary meaning of the word. It gave me 50 examples of phrases, which contain the word ‘juxtaposed’. There is an option called ‘Etymologies’ where you can look at the sources and development of a word, you have entered in to the Wordnik search box.
Correct pronunciation of a word is as important as its spelling. Like other online dictionaries, Wordnik has a built-in speaker, which helps you learn the correct pronunciation of the word. However, there is a new option I haven’t found in other online dictionaries. You can record and save your own pronunciation of a word or a phrase for future reference.
The ‘Statistics’ option in Wordnik is interesting. It informs you about the usage of a particular word in a single year. It displays the frequency of usage in the form of graphs and pie-charts.
The other unique feature of Wordnik is the integration of Twitter. The dictionary in Wordnik searches a word on the social networking site and displays the tweets where the word has been used. However, the utility of this feature is a bit difficult to understand.
Like Twitter, Flickr is also integrated at the bottom of the Wordnik page, which pulls out images related to the search word. There is a ‘Related’ section where you can find the synonyms and antonyms of the search word. 
Although it is not mandatory to register in Wordnik, if you sign up you can contribute new words, pronunciation or suggest related words to Wordnik.
Wordnik is definitely a useful tool for budding bloggers and writers like me who wish to expand their word power.
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