Vizit

According to their website, Visuwords™ is an "online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate. Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections."

I gave it a whirl by entering the word blue, and it immediately built a nice big web of associations:



The service is also free for use by anyone with an internet connection; no membership or other access fee involved. I also noted this on the website -- "Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers" -- so that's a fairly respectable source.

Forgery

Coining or inventing words is a regular task for storytellers, and in certain genres plays an important part of world-building. Not every writer forges new words -- some are fine with using only words that already exist -- but word smithing can be fun and a great way to stretch both your vocabulary and your imagination.

When coining words for your fiction one of the easiest methods is to create compound words by joining together two small words to forge a new construct. Some examples of these that already exist in our language are copperhead, eyebrow, flowerpot, handbag, ladybug, sandstorm and windmill. When you create a compound word you should consider what the two words you're combining mean, how they relate to each other, and when combined what sort of imagery they invoke for your reader. Let's shuffle the example compound words I just gave you and see what new words we can invent:

copperbrow ~ eyebag ~ flowermill ~ handstorm ~ ladyhead ~ sandpot ~ windbug

Copperbrow made me think of a warrior wearing some sort of metal band or helm to protect his forehead or eyes. I imagine if a character doesn't get any sleep they'll acquire a huge matched set of eyebags. Flowermill invokes two ideas -- a village perfumery or a brothel that specializes either in catering to virgins or procuring them. An agitated translator for the deaf might indulge in a handstorm, while a garden of ladyhead plants might bloom with genteel elegance. An ancient fire extinguisher could be called a sandpot, and an exotic alien insect that lives its life entirely within the air currents above a planet (or another species of blustering, ineffective politician) should be named windbugs.

If compound words seem too obvious, you can meld them together more completely by joining them at shared prefixes or suffixes. For this you can play with Degraeve.com's Invent-a-Word generator, which recombines words that share common prefixes or suffixes. It also allows you to choose the specific number of letters to be shared by the recombined words. Here's part of a list I got when I fed "word" as a 3-letter shared prefix to the generator:

word + ordain = wordain
word + ordeal = wordeal
word + order = worder
word + orderly = worderly
word + ordinal = wordinal
word + ordinance = wordinance
word + ordinaries = wordinaries
word + ordinarily = wordinarily
word + ordinate = wordinate
word + ordination = wordination

The generator can also be useful in reverse melding two words with a common suffix; here's a partial list of "word" as a 1-letter shared suffix:

aglow + word = agloword
borrow + word = borroword
claw + word = claword
draw + word = draword
few + word = feword
flaw + word = flaword
flow + word = floword
gnaw + word = gnaword
hallow + word = halloword
harrow + word = harroword
law + word = laword
low + word = loword
pew + word = peword
pillow + word = pilloword
shadow + word = shadoword
shallow + word = shalloword
show + word = showord
tallow + word = talloword
thaw + word = thaword
threw + word = threword
wallow + word = walloword
whew + word = wheword
widow + word = widoword

Do you have any particular tricks or tools you use when coining words for your stories that you'd like to share? Let us know in comments.

The Quick Brown Whatsahoosit

If you're a poet or writer who likes playing with nouns you might try to feed some of your text to the N+7 generator, which according to the site "involves replacing each noun in a text with the seventh one following it in a dictionary. (In French, it is also referred to as the 'S+7' procedure.) Here you can enter an English text and 15 alternative texts will be generated, from N+1, which replaces each noun with the next one in the dictionary, to N+15, which takes the 15th noun following."

I tried a classic bit of typing practice, and here are the results:

N+0: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.

N+1: The quick brown foxglove jumped over the lazy dogcarts.

N+2: The quick brown foxhole jumped over the lazy dogfights.

N+3: The quick brown foxhound jumped over the lazy doggies.

N+4: The quick brown foyer jumped over the lazy doggies.

N+5: The quick brown fraction jumped over the lazy doglegs.

N+6: The quick brown fracture jumped over the lazy dogmas.

N+7: The quick brown fragment jumped over the lazy do-gooders.

N+8: The quick brown fragrance jumped over the lazy dogsbodies.

N+9: The quick brown frail jumped over the lazy doilies.

N+10: The quick brown frailty jumped over the lazy doles.

N+11: The quick brown frame jumped over the lazy dolls.

N+12: The quick brown frame-up jumped over the lazy dollars.

N+13: The quick brown framework jumped over the lazy dollops.

N+14: The quick brown franc jumped over the lazy dollies.

N+15: The quick brown franchise jumped over the lazy dolphins.

(Generator link swiped from Gerard over at The Presurfer)