blog4net

A dictionary explains the meaning only verbally and with examples. But at times you need diagrams to understand the words, their inflections, derivatives and its etymology in a more effective way. There are many online dictionaries that do the job in the traditional way. Visit Visuwords.com which explains words in a graphical manner and in a better way.

This site consists of only one page. The header has a search bar. Enter the word you want to look up or click 'Random' to see a randomly chosen word. It is displayed in neuranet model. This graphic is displayed below the header. The graphic is a flash animation. You can see the tree grow more and more depending upon the word and its inflections. Nouns are displayed in blue circle, verbs are displayed in green circle. Derivations are indicated with grey dotted line connecting the root word. Place your cursor on the circles to see the definition and at times, a sentence for example. The legend is given right below the graphical area. You can enlarge and decrease the graphical area with your scroll button on the mouse. You can pawn the graphic by clicking and holding the left mouse button whichever way you want. See my screenshot. When I searched for the word 'web' the graphic looked like this. You can enlarge the graphic to the full width of your screen.

The interface of the site is simple, coz you dont need many options except looking up the dictionary. The inflections cannot be understood easily based upon their coloured cicles, lines and dotted lines. You need to master the legend. But its not hard to memorize them. The colors are easy to remember.

The site uses Princeton University's WordNet, an opensource dictionary built by University students and language researchers.

The positive thing is that the site is free to use and its a good site for people who are not native english speakers.

I give it a big thumbs up to the site. :-)

Click here to visit the site : http://www.visuwords.com/