***WORD WORLD™*** The Ultimate Word Finder (c) 2011 Dr Jeff Software™ Co. ============= PRODUCT BRIEF ============= WORD WORLD™ is "The Ultimate Word Finder" -- an app that answers the question, "What’s that word? It's right on the tip of my tongue." WORD WORLD™ is a compilation of word "similitude" groups -- groups of words that either sound alike or are spelled alike. WORD WORLD™ implements a proprietary "word search engine" -- so that you will never be "at a loss for words". It is an essential tool for wordsmiths, crossword enthusiasts, lyricists, writers, teachers and students. WORD WORLD™ is a new class of app implementing word search via its proprietary database -- a classified compilation of 1000s of word "similitude" groups. For example, "word" and "world" both sound alike and are spelled alike. Any search on "word" would find word groups "ward, weird, word" (vowel exchange), "whirred, word" (homonyms), "sword, words" (anagrams), and "word, world" (add consonant). Even "would" appears in the word groups with "Silent letters" sub-category of the "Consonants" main category (1 of 10). WORD WORLD™ has formed thousands of "similitude" word groups by classifying a select subset of the nearly 1,000,000 words in the English vocabulary into 10 "categories", each with up to 19 sub-categories (or "sections"). In WORD WORLD™, words are "similar" if they either sound alike: homonyms, malaprops; or are spelled alike: anagrams, prefixes, letter substitutions, etc. For example, homonyms have been organized into double, triple, quadruple and greater classes (each presented in a separate "section"). So far, a surprising number of triples and quads have been cataloged. Likewise, surprisingly large anagrams (and palindromes) have been found and included. BENEFITS * Find words and check spellings -- easier than with a dictionary * Avoid common mistakenly used words (as "malaprops") * Find rhymes with "homonyms" and other categories * Complete lists of homonyms, anagrams, palindromes * Reference category includes abbreviations for texting, US states, TLDs, etc. Comparison to Dictionaries and Spell Checkers WORD WORLD™ (WW) is meant to be a companion, not a substitute, for dictionaries and thesauruses. Thus, WW "finds" words, but does not attempt to define them. Once a word is first found by WW, with its correct spelling displayed, only then may its definitions be looked up on standard dictionaries. Finding a word, and knowing its correct spelling, are prerequisites to finding external dictionary entries. WORD WORLD™ is also an ersatz "spell checker", in that it gives correct spellings for all words in the database -- giving rise to "Oh, that's how it is spelled" moments. WW is superior to dictionaries in that it shows spellings for an entire GROUP of "similar" words, that may or may not be adjacent in, or even in the same area of, a dictionary. In fact, WW focuses on finding word groups that cannot otherwise be readily found in a dictionary -- because the words in the group do not necessarily begin with the same letters (e.g., salary vs. celery, or schism vs. chasm, or earn vs. urn, or accept vs. except, etc.) Categories WORD WORLD™ has formed thousands of "similitude" word groups by classifying a select subset of the nearly 1,000,000 words in the English vocabulary into 10 "categories", each with up to 19 sub-categories (or "sections"), as follows: 1. Homonyms (sound alike) - includes: -sextuplets, quads, triples (>80) and doubles (>500) -"near" homonyms in several sub-categories including names -homographs (spelled same, different sound; e.g. verb/noun: "record"; tenses: "read") -alternative spellings (e.g., gage, gauge) and words 2. Malaprops (more complex, sound alike somewhat) 3. Prefix/Suffix substitutes (e.g., cord- accord, discord, record; and sect, sectarian, section, sector) 4. Vowels: -endings (e.g., and- band, bland, brand, ...) -substitutes (e.g., bad, bed, bead, bid, bod, bud) -final e or ee (e.g., bad, bade; corps, corpse; devotee) -double vowels (e.g., god, good; met, meet; chose, choose); and more 5. Consonants: -adds/substitutes/swaps (e.g., backlash, backslash; undeserved, underserved or debut, rebut) -d/t; and c/ch/s/sh/sch, f/v/b/ph, t/th, th/ph/gh (similar sounds) -silent letters 6. Anagrams (same letters) 7. Palindromes (just for fun) 8. Compound words (sound alike) 9. Coined 10. Reference: -Texting abbrevs. (OMG,IMHO, this is a great addition to this edition-LOL) -US state/territories (50 states, DC and 8 territories) -US Postal address abbrevs. (over 130; e.g., BLVD, HWY, CYN) -Internet TLDs (over 250 top-level domains, both "generic", e.g., .com, and "country", e.g., .us, .uk) -Gazillions: extreme scale numbers (trillion, quadrillion, ...) -Technical ordinals (from yacto, ..., pico, nano to giga, tera, ..., yotta) -Latin abbreviations (A.D., a.m., e.g., i.e., Q.E.D., etc.) Homonyms, Homographs, etc. For reference, Dr Jeff has chosen this definition of "homonym": words that sound exactly alike but are spelled differently (and not merely an alternative spelling); such word groups are also called "homophones". Words that sound nearly alike (e.g., acts, axe; boor, bore; breath, breadth) we choose to call "near homonyms". Proper names, especially common popular first names, are included in a separate section of "near homonyms" (e.g., Barry, berry; Neil, kneel; P/pat; Stu, stew). Finally, our definition of "homographs" is a single word that has more than one pronunciation (and thus more than one meaning; e.g., bass: fish or low frequency sound). These are also called "heteronyms". Malaprops WORD WORLD™ is not only great for satisfying those "tip of the tongue" moments (sounds like), but also for finding pairs/groups of words that are commonly misused -- "malaprops". For example, some of the most commonly misused pairs are "principal" vs. "principle"; "then" vs. "than"; "lose" vs. "loose"; "affect" vs. "effect"; and the fun "gantlet" (run through) vs. "gauntlet" (thrown down). "Malaprop" is a quite general term, referring to any set of words that can be confused due to sounding "enough" alike to be exchanged within phrases without totally losing reference. (The term arises from the fictional character, "Mrs. Malaprop", in R. B. Sheridan's 1775 comedy "The Rivals".) Traditionally, a "malaprop" is a substituted word in a phrase which is humorous and/or ludicrous in the context. (Common examples are: "polo bears" -- polo vs. polar; "White Horse Souse" -- horse vs. house, and souse vs. source.) Many of the categories in WORD WORLD™ include word groups that could fall into the generic "malaprop" category, but have been more tightly classified into finer categories based on specific differentiations (enumerated in the category and/or section headings). Those word groups remaining in the main "malaprop" category are further classified into 2 sections: -"Strong" malaprops -- commonly misused ones (e.g., principal vs. principle (also homonyms), gauntlet vs. gantlet, founder vs. flounder, and the mundane than vs. then); and -"General" malaprops -- less likely to be misused, but humorous or intriguing pairings. Finally, version 1.0 is only a starter, baseline compilation. It is intended to be vastly extended by contributions from users and the fan base -- much in the way of Wikipedia(tm). For starters, the WORD WORLD™ compilation contains: *Totals: *word groups > 6,000 ("similitude" word groups) *word entries > 18,000 (non-unique -- many words appear in multiple categories) *Homonyms: *Sextuples = 1 *Quads = 10 (+4 "others") *Triples = 85 *Doubles = 546 *"near" homonyms = ~375 (in 10 sub-categories) In summary, WORD WORLD™ is useful for: *Gaming: word games such as crossword puzzles and Scrabble *Schools: generating spelling lists and building vocablary *Writing: helping writers choose (not "chose") the best/right word, and avoid common errors (e.g., "lose" vs. "loose") *Composing lyrics (most word groups end with the same sound, esp. the "Vowels" cat.) *Choosing alternative keywords in search text TO CLOSE: if online, click browser BACK button LAST EDIT: 4/29/11