Four (Fun) Ways to Find That Elusive Word

by Carla Douglas
@CarlaJDouglas

Image by Calamity Meg (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Everyone has experienced this at one time or another: you've searched for a word that’s on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t find it. It’s so frustrating, because you know that if you can only identify it, it will render your sentence perfect.

What do you do?

You can go straight to an online synonym finder to see if it turns up there. You can also put the question out to your social media platform, hoping someone comes through with the answer. Or, when the right word escapes you, you can do one of the following.

1. Consult a visual dictionary or thesaurus. There are several available online. Type a word in the search box, and a map pops up that links your word to many others associated with it. Most online visual dictionaries are colour coded to indicate parts of speech and other features. The visual thesaurus from Graph Words (free) is the most basic; the one from Thinkmap (subscription) provides the most detail about the English language (it also includes an excellent blog); and finally, the graphical dictionary at Visuwords (free) is by far the most visually stimulating and entertaining.

           Map of the word Renegade on Visuwords.com

2. Consider that the word you’re looking for is hiding in plain view—that it’s a contronym. Synonym, homonym, antonym and contronym—a word that can mean the opposite of what you think it means. Here’s an example: The word “cleave” can mean “to cling to,” but more often we think of “cleave” as that thing we do with a cleaver—“to split apart.” Here’s a list of 14 contronyms in an article from Salon.com. If you have a taste for even more, here are 75 contranyms collected at Daily Writing Tips. Enjoy!

3. Consider that the word you’re looking for, to describe the very particular ennui of a very particular character, will never be found in any of the usual places. To locate this (albeit fictitious) word, maybe you need to consult the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. (Wouldn't this make a great title for a novel?) Here’s a sample entry:

énouement: n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world—read more. 

Warning: If you do decide to consult the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, leave yourself lots of time, as you may become lost in the definitions.

4. Finally, you may need to consider the possibility that no English word exists for the emotion you are trying to express. Other languages, it appears, do a better job than English of pinpointing that exact feeling—for example, gezelligheid (Dutch)—the “comfort and coziness of being at home with friends, with loved ones, or general togetherness.” Pei-Ying Lin has created a marvellous infographic to show the connection between the emotions we can’t put a name to and what they are called in other languages. Want to explore emotional language even further? Scroll further down to see Lin’s map of emotions peculiar to the Internet age.

So, are these sources guaranteed to help you find just the word you were looking for? Not really. But they are sure to provide you with hours of distracted entertainment and to stimulate your curiosity about words and language. And they might even lead you to a word more precise than the one you were looking for.

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