The art of the dictionary
01 Dec 2007 2 Comments
in Books, Culture, Library, Life, MadSilence, News, On Books & Reading, Popular Culture, Reading, Thoughts Tags: Dictionary, Miriam-Webster, Visuwords™, Webster's Dictionary Unabridged
Image source: mere cat personal website
As a boy, I enjoyed leafing through my family’s battered copy of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. The elderly tome was reverently displayed on a wooden pedestal in the family room. And while there were always new and exotic words to discover, I enjoyed most the illustrations that accompanied the words, and especially the colored plates bound in the center of the volume. There were pictures of aircraft, birds, fish, buildings, people and art works.
Now there’s Merriam-Webster’s newly-launched Visual Dictionary Online filled with stunning illustrations and accurate definitions. Check out the unique combination of words and graphics. For example, under the Fine Arts category, there’s the definition of “painting and drawing”: Arts that use graphics and color to represent or suggest visible or imagined concepts on a surface. Click on “major techniques” for this image of the “processes used to execute drawings and paintings.”
There’s also the Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary. Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Only instead of providing a list of categories and subcategories, Visuwords™ produces graphical displays reminiscent of a neural net. Enter the word “art” and generate dozens of nodes representing nouns and adjectives connected by their usage and meaning. The art/fine art node is linked to dozens of other nodes: work of art; plastic art; creation; kitsch; etc. Place your cursor over nodes to see the definitions and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.
Links:
Webster’s Dictionary from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Miriam-Webster Online
Webster’s Dictionary (1913 Edition) from bibliomania
Visual Dictionary Online from Miriam-Webster
Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary
~TAB
Feb 01, 2008 @ 05:29:17
hi, I visited this Visuwords and it was fun, thanks for the link. Sarah
Feb 03, 2008 @ 06:06:33
Hi Sarah. I enjoy the visual display offered by Visuwords. It places words & their relevants in a graphical context that increases my understand of language. It’s cool too.
MadSilence