thesaurus

Apparently Microsoft Word said that “charming” and “chocolate box” are synonyms. This is a thesaurus gone wild. I wonder how much computers promoted the idea of all synonyms being interchangeable.

David Whyte’s “Consolations” is something like a poetic thesaurus.

lemma (n.) : a family of words that all share the same words (ie: develop = development, developing, developmental, underdeveloped, redevelop, etc.)

What are the irreducible semantic units behind any language? I want to figure that out, draw them in 50 or so diagrams, and put it on a poster.

For the semantheon, roots should be indivisible. A root obviously has multiple synonyms. Synonyms can have multiple roots (and it’s also need to think that the variation between synonyms comes from a relationship with another root.) But you can’t link roots to other roots. For example: “before” and “in front” can be synonyms (“I stood before it” /

A semantheon has groups of pairs; every pair has two opposite primes, each of which has a lexigraph, a tree of clustered synonyms. A semantheon is a hierarchical map of all meaning, and it can work in any language.

Here are the groups: space, time, quantity, quality, evaluations, emotions, interactions, change.

Here’s a story about the sequence of

There are capacity reasons why a dictionary, thesaurus, rhyme dictionary, usage dictionary, and etymology library can’t be fused into a physical artifact. It would be tens of thousands of pages. But why can’t we combine them all together into a digital interface? I’m sure this has been tried…

Thesaurus runs:

• absurdity: paradox, inanity, folly, ludicrousness, comicality, koan, double think, bathos, travesty, ridicule, doubletalk, twaddle, fustian, galimatias, poppycock, crock, bushwah, flummadiddle, blarney, blather, jive, piffle, dada, preposterous, fatuous, cockamime.

• disorder: derangement, disquiet, discord, disarray, jumble, dishevel

A thesaurus is a word treasury.