Friday, August 27, 2004

Forthright's Phrontistery of Rare Words

[http://phrontistery.50megs.com/]

What is a phrontistery? It's a thinking space. If I ever build a house, I will be sure to have the architect put one in, half way between the loo and the library.

Yes, this site is old news to me and many of its devoted fans, but to the uninitiated, Forthright's noble work of lexicography is often an amazement. Between this site and the Urban Dictionary, I think there's a great education to be had, especially for the burgeoning community of hackers who are wired about Wordnet, RDF, semantics, etc. The first lesson of linguistics should be the nearly stultifying diversity of linguistic practice. The second should be that ambiguity is the stock-in-trade of language, not the exceptional situation. However, time and again I hear people who should know better talk about how "comprehensive" Wordnet is, how "complete", except for those "marginal" cases. This is simply very naive...