Idea: Thsrs, The Shorter Thesaurus
Popular new social networking services like Twitter, where users write extremely short messages about whatever’s on their minds, present a challenge: How can you intelligently get across a complex thought in just 140 characters without needing to use ugly abbreviations (e.g. “w/o needing 2 use ugly abbrev’s”)?
If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is: Thsrs, the thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you’re looking up. Just enter one of the longer words in your message, and Thsrs will suggest shorter words to use instead.
Try out the embedded version below, and bookmark www.thsrs.com so it’s always handy when you need it.*
1. Enter a long word.
* I considered calling it Sesquipedalian but I can never remember how to spell that. Thsrs was developed using the Big Huge Thesaurus API, and coding help from my friend Jay. This is a beta version, of course, so let me know if things go wrong.
Update: Thsrs is now available as a plug-in for your browser! Check out the Thsrs page for details.
Update: I thought I’d make a note about the word source, as some people have commented that Thsrs sometimes returns surprising results. Thsrs currently uses the Big Huge Thesaurus, which is based on the Princeton University WordNet Database, and has the distinction of being the only thesaurus I found with an API. If you know of a better easily-accessible Thesaurus word source, let me know and I’ll see about switching over. In the meantime, additions to the database can be suggested by visiting the BHT, looking up a word, and using the “Suggest” form at the bottom of the results page.
Comments
Great idea. On the minus side, when I entered “awesome,” it returned “awful,” which, while indeed shorter, is not really what I meant.
Here’s an idea: let the user enter an entire sentence at once.
Posted by: Doug | July 8, 2008 10:12 PM
love it!
its choice of synonyms is questionable sometimes—such as “state” as the only alternative to “freedom”—causing its function to double as a neat way to pass the time.
Posted by: Emma MD | July 8, 2008 10:16 PM
The idea is great, but I am a little disappointed with the tool. I just entered “eight”, and it gave me “viii” and “VIII”. I would have assumed that “8” would be a straight-forward choice! Or am I thinking too much along text messaging lines?
Posted by: Matthias Schreck | July 8, 2008 10:32 PM
It seems as if it would be trivial but useful to arrange synonyms in order of length … in any case: cool idea!
Posted by: Erin | July 8, 2008 10:49 PM
Your thsrs does not meet my needs as it did not find any matches for “testicles”.
Posted by: Pavel | July 8, 2008 11:13 PM
@Pavel How about “balls” or “nuts” or “testes” or “berries”? Otherwise, do a search for “testicle” and add an ‘s’ to the end of any of the 8 words it suggests.
Posted by: Ed Knittel | July 9, 2008 12:27 AM
I’m running OSX/Safari and I type and hit enter and … nothing. I have to reach ALL the way over to my mouse MOVE it and THEN hit “search”. I almost died.
Posted by: Mike Fox | July 9, 2008 12:50 AM
It’s a brilliant idea, but i entered the word ‘what’ and got back ‘Unknown word, try again.’.
Posted by: brian | July 9, 2008 1:41 AM
I entered ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’, which means ‘the act or habit of estimating as worthless’.
This is, apparently, an unknown word.
I thus conclude that this new service is worthless.
Joking apart, though, it’s a great idea and it’s going on my bookmarks list right now. :)
Posted by: Chris | July 9, 2008 4:14 AM
Great idea! How I need this! Never use a long word where a short one will do
As Hemingway said of Faulkner:
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
Here’s an untested/unsubmitted firefox search plugin
Can you help with the query part i.e. the GET template?
Posted by: hollerith | July 9, 2008 5:44 AM
Okay I fixed it.
:P
(Save as a file thsrs.xml for example and copy it to your mozilla/firefox searchplugins folder)
Posted by: hollerith | July 9, 2008 6:03 AM
Awesome!
Posted by: Dustin | July 9, 2008 10:00 AM
It is pretty sweet. Please make it work with the keyboard: hitting enter should start a search. :)
Posted by: no | July 9, 2008 11:14 AM
This…hold.on…rad.
Posted by: Adam | July 9, 2008 1:34 PM
I prefer Dutton Speedwords. A bit idiosyncratic at times, but elegant and short.
J mote voti. Mux a ozi natoim, b belu & lox.
By the way, was the web page supposed to do anything? Clicking on the button does not submit the form.
Posted by: Amber Vaesca | July 9, 2008 1:59 PM
I like it, but it would be cool if the url reflected the word you were looking up. That way I could use it with sogudi and the firefox smart URL feature.
Posted by: sam | July 9, 2008 5:54 PM
It would be good if it could suggest the correct spelling of words which have been entered incorrectly.
Perhaps the ability to have users suggest their own synonyms to add to the database would also be useful.
Posted by: Oren | July 9, 2008 6:04 PM
Consider allowing the user to type in the text field rather than having to press the “Look Up” box. Think Google.
Posted by: Foo | July 9, 2008 6:54 PM
Gagh, stupid HTML tag parser. That should read: “…allowing the user to type “RETURN” in the text field…”
Posted by: Foo | July 9, 2008 6:56 PM
You are the guardian angel of headline writers
Posted by: stet | July 9, 2008 6:57 PM
I’ve made an update. Hitting “Enter” should now submit the word. Let me know if I introduced a bug in the process. -David
Posted by: David | July 9, 2008 7:44 PM
Dude! This is just awesome!
Can you do the opposite, as well? What if I want to sound like William F. Buckeley?
Posted by: Alex | July 10, 2008 12:01 AM
You should make a version that automatically replaces long words in body text. That way I could make pretentious essays readable with a single click.
Posted by: Carl | July 10, 2008 12:04 AM
This is brilliant!
May I suggest a tag-line:
“Why use a long word, when a diminutive one will do?”
Posted by: Stu | July 10, 2008 3:52 AM
Oh, and for reference, the word Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia refers to a ‘fear of long words’. Seriously. It’s on Wiktionary, even.
Posted by: Stu | July 10, 2008 3:56 AM
Alex had a great idea above. Since I had a few extra minutes, I put together the Sesquipedalophilia Thesaurus. Basically, I took David’s code and changed a “less than” sign to a “greater than” sign. Enjoy!
(David, I hope that’s okay with you. If you want me to take it down, please say so.)
Posted by: Doug | July 10, 2008 1:20 PM
This is (for the most part) outstanding. I shall give it a go.
I just came upon your blog and must say, I love it. And your photography is stellar. Time to throw you up on the RSS.
Posted by: Chavi | July 10, 2008 3:56 PM
Great idea! Needs some work though. I entered “mother” and as one of the results I got … “yeast”… and no mention of “mom” or even “mum”. Or “mommy” even.
Posted by: Vanessah | July 10, 2008 11:07 PM
This is a totally awesome idea!
The second word I tried was antidisestablishmenatarianism. I was almost expecting some clever comment instead of a standard response. You should totally build in a response for common REALLY LONG words, because you know everyone will try them out, and it’s not entirely satisfying to receive a normal response.
Posted by: Rebecca | July 11, 2008 10:03 AM
Nifty concept. I haven’t tried it, but I can see from the comments that this nascent version is buggy and/or deficient.
It puts me in mind of the “telegram game.” Is anyone else familiar with it? I think it was from an early incarnation of Games Magazine, or perhaps its short-lived sister publication, The Four Star Puzzler? The premise was saving money on telegrams, which were priced per word, by combining short words into homophonic or quasihomophonic longer ones. I did some web-searching but unfortunately found no results; was hoping for a really clever, well-constructed example. In lieu of that, I’ll try to make up something on the spot…
Okay, so that one wasn’t so hot. (I’m bummed “Ira Nixon’s” doesn’t reduce the wordcount.) But as you can see, it was never meant to be a practical thing (as Thsrs potentially is) and, depending on how far you’re willing to stretch your sounds, can be very obtuse. There must be some reason why it’s stuck in my brain all this time, though.
Posted by: pannonica | July 11, 2008 1:07 PM
How about the opposite, making a plugin for firefox that reads the abbreviated text in twitter or other places and replaces with the long words?. You can magically have twitter messages more than 140 letters long.
Posted by: Nicolás Rivas | July 13, 2008 12:46 PM
I now know that there is no shorter synonym to “antidisestablishmentarianism”. :(
Posted by: Leah | July 13, 2008 3:57 PM
Leah, I hate to tell you this, but I think you’re out of luck for ones of the same length or longer, too.
Posted by: pannonica | July 14, 2008 1:34 PM
What would be really useful is a tool to suggest longer synonyms for short words. Then I could seem all educated and stuff.
Posted by: Martha | July 17, 2008 9:15 AM
Great stuff. As a big twitterer I will use it a lot.
I had the same suggestion as Doug. Let the user feed the whole tweet into thsrs with all major words being reduced.
Also if you implement an API yourself, tools like twhirl could use it.
Michael
Posted by: MichaelR | July 22, 2008 8:44 PM
It’s also now a Yubnub command, for those who are interested in that sort of thing.
Posted by: SMerwin | July 23, 2008 8:26 AM
Your thsrs fails to come up with a shorter word for “thesaurus.” If you add that word for thesaurus you could call your service “trsr.”
Posted by: Paul | January 30, 2011 3:00 PM
Love the idea, but why isn’t there an option to submit suggestions? I typed in “momentarily” and expected to see “soon” but instead saw “momently.”
Posted by: Stephanie | April 9, 2011 5:06 PM
Love the idea, but why isn’t there an option to submit suggestions? I typed in “momentarily” and expected to see “soon” but instead saw “momently.”
Posted by: Stephanie | April 9, 2011 5:07 PM
I’m with Stephanie, this would be a much better tool if users could suggest words.
I thought I’d found the tool I’d been looking for for ages but, alas, it comes up short. (No pun intended.)
While it may take longer (much longer in some cases), going through the results of a Thesaurus.com search may still be the best way to go if one must find the shortest acceptable synonym for a word.
Posted by: Christopher-J | May 16, 2012 3:58 PM