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i am trying to find a way to do a reverse definition-look-up inside a thesaurus or dictionary. there are some API's for dictionaries and thesaurus available, but few have reverse-lookup function, the ones that do are really limited (e.g. don't consider synonyms).

e.g. desire + emotion + not disgust + not hate ====> results in: love

this is for a project in communication studies. where a limited vocabulary of less than 50 words allows for more sophisticated communication and expression (used for beings that can hold only so many words in their brains)

the objective is to condense a number of source words (usually 3-10) into just one new word or phrase (or a short list of candidates). the new word/phrase would have a roughly similar meaning like the 3-10 words its made of. that new target word/phrase is not part of the dictionary of source words, nor will it join the dictionary.

the 3-10 source word can include negated ones (e.g. NOT tall, NOT fast, ...).

so in a way the 50 source words are my legos, and i want to find out what i can build with them. i want to come up with as many combinations and new words as possible (no compound-words)

  • is there a clever way to do brute force? to include synonyms?
  • or are there thesauruses that i can download and query myself?
  • should work with other languages (chinese, japanese, german, ..)

i m happy for pointers in any direction.

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here are some dictionary and thesaurus API's. most big companies offer these, but i m afraid i d overwhelm them if i just did a brute force lookup.. (or they d like me to pay money for that).

http://words.bighugelabs.com/api.php https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php

Santa Chris
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  • Perhaps define the map, with limitations 1st, rather than potential variations. It could be a math project, or the possible permutations of 3-10 words from 50 word bin. If the upper limit is defined, may be more linear in defining each possible combination, or re-combination, arriving finally at the lowest limit, or 3 (or, "possible combinations of 3 of something from 50 of something"). See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4009756/how-to-count-string-occurrence-in-string http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9960908/permutations-in-javascript – guest271314 Mar 25 '14 at 05:16
  • thanks for your suggestion. i ll give it a shot. in the meantime i found a reverse dictionary function at wordnik. – Santa Chris Apr 11 '14 at 08:01

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