Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Regex Dictionary

Nice one! A web-based dictionary you can search with regular expressions (HT MetaFilter). from the site's introduction page:

The Regex Dictionary is a searchable online dictionary, based on The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, that returns matches based on strings —defined here as a series of characters and metacharacters— rather than on whole words, while optionally grouping results by their part of speech. For example, a search for "cat" will return any words that include the string "cat", optionally grouped according to gramatical category:

    * Adjectives: catastrophic, delicate, eye-catching, etc.
    * Adverbs: marcato, staccato, etc.
    * Nouns: scat, category, vacation, etc.
    * Verbs: cater, complicate, etc.

In other words, the Regex Dictionary searches for words based on how they are spelled; it can find:

    * adjectives ending in ly (197; ex.: homely)
    * words ending in the suffix ship (89)
          o Adjectives (1, midship)
          o Nouns (80; ex.: membership)
          o Suffixes (1, -ship)
          o Verbs (6; ex.: worship)
    * words, not counting proper nouns, that have six consecutive consonants, including y (79; ex.: strychnine)
    * words, not counting proper nouns, that have six consecutive consonants, not counting y (2; ex.: latchstring)
    * words of 12 or more letters that consist entirely of alternate consonants and vowels (45; ex.: legitimatize)

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TV Linguistics - Pronouncify.com and the fictional Princeton Linguistics department

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