Adjective of the word time

The idea for the Describing Words engine came when I was building the engine for Related Words (it’s like a thesaurus, but gives you a much broader set of related words, rather than just synonyms). While playing around with word vectors and the «HasProperty» API of conceptnet, I had a bit of fun trying to get the adjectives which commonly describe a word. Eventually I realised that there’s a much better way of doing this: parse books!

Project Gutenberg was the initial corpus, but the parser got greedier and greedier and I ended up feeding it somewhere around 100 gigabytes of text files — mostly fiction, including many contemporary works. The parser simply looks through each book and pulls out the various descriptions of nouns.

Hopefully it’s more than just a novelty and some people will actually find it useful for their writing and brainstorming, but one neat little thing to try is to compare two nouns which are similar, but different in some significant way — for example, gender is interesting: «woman» versus «man» and «boy» versus «girl». On an inital quick analysis it seems that authors of fiction are at least 4x more likely to describe women (as opposed to men) with beauty-related terms (regarding their weight, features and general attractiveness). In fact, «beautiful» is possibly the most widely used adjective for women in all of the world’s literature, which is quite in line with the general unidimensional representation of women in many other media forms. If anyone wants to do further research into this, let me know and I can give you a lot more data (for example, there are about 25000 different entries for «woman» — too many to show here).

The blueness of the results represents their relative frequency. You can hover over an item for a second and the frequency score should pop up. The «uniqueness» sorting is default, and thanks to my Complicated Algorithm™, it orders them by the adjectives’ uniqueness to that particular noun relative to other nouns (it’s actually pretty simple). As you’d expect, you can click the «Sort By Usage Frequency» button to adjectives by their usage frequency for that noun.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source mongodb which was used in this project.

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After a little time, I felt somewhat better, and succeeded in reaching the cupboard where, usually, I keep brandy and biscuits.

The smooth, long swell of the waves gradually changed into an agitated frothy surface, which constant flashes of lightning presented to us in all its horror; and in the mean time the wind whistled through the rigging, and the ship creaked as if she was every minute going to pieces.

It was not until I had meditated upon the matter, for some considerable time, that I fully realized that the extraordinary space of time through which it had stood, was sufficient to have utterly pulverized the very stones of which it was built, had they been taken from any earthly quarry.

But now, it could be scarcely called a star; for it had increased to vast proportions, being incomparably greater than the sun had been in the olden time.

This arrangement interrupted the weekly recitation of the whole psalter, and caused great difficulty in later times; for when the feasts increased in number the ferial psalter fell almost into complete disuse.

I caught it bad; and without knowing what I was afraid of, I started, and if any fourteen year old boy can make better time than I did on that occasion, I should like to see him run.

Needham found that, under the circumstances in which he made his experiments, animalcules always did arise in the infusions, when a sufficient time had elapsed to allow for their development.

Mr. Welsby had been a widower for many years; he was a grave, scholarly man, who spent most of his spare time in his own library.

I kept straight on to Grasshopper Falls, arriving there in ample time to inform him of the approach of his old enemies.

At last, in that steady and deadly circling of Gray Wolf and Kazan, there came a time when the old bull did not turnthen a second, a third and a fourth time, and Gray Wolf seemed to know.

Here will appear before your very eyes the dolorous tears, the impetuous sighs, the heart—breaking words, the stormy thoughts, which have harrowed me with an ever—recurring goad, and have torn away from me sleep and appetite and the pleasant times of old, and my much—loved beauty.

And he spent the serious hours of this brief time writing notes and charts and pamphlets that perhaps some hundred men in all the universe might care to readpamphlets no better and no more accurate than hundreds of other men were writing at that very moment.

Nay, then thou losest precious time, I‘ll not detain thee.

It appears also from the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Austin, and others, that the Christians of their days drew several kinds of presages from persons sneezing at critical times; from meeting a cat, a dog, or an ill—looking (squinting) woman, a maiden, one blind of an eye, or a cripple; on being caught by the cloak on stepping out of a door, or from a sudden catch in one‘s joint or limb.

The colonies, founded at different times, under different auspices, by people differing in religion, politics, and material interests, remained largely independent of each other during colonial times, and on separating from England became independent states.

| | | | «We know of no other plan which will infallibly lead to the | | result in a reasonable time.

All this took up valuable time, and night was coming on.

His busiest time is in the Indian summer.

These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians and Germans, who plant a few vegetables and grape—vines at odd times, while their main business is mining and prospecting.

The exact time for broiling steaks must be determined by taste, whether they are liked underdone or well done; more than from 8 to 10 minutes for a steak 3/4 inch in thickness, we think, would spoil and dry up the juices of the meat.

If one kept shop on a breezy tip of the Delectable Mountains with all the regions of the world laid out below, he could not be expected to climb up for the hundredth time with a first exhilaration, or to swing his alpenstock as though he were on a rare holiday.

| | | | Now is the time to subscribe, as these Premiums will be | | offered for a limited time only.

Mr. M.A. Hanna was cheerfully expressing his confidence as to the outcome of it all; when the Czar and the Czarina were visiting President Faure in Paris «amid unparalleled enthusiasm«; and when semi—educated people were appraising, with a glibness possible to ignorance only, the literary achievements of William Morris and George du Maurier, who had just died:at this remote time, Roger Stapylton returned to Lichfield.

And who can tell how often, in prehistoric times, some little gleam of civilization, less bright and steady than this one had become, may have been quenched in slavery or massacre?

We were within a day‘s march of the Indian town, and had lain down in a thicket of spruce bushes after having looked in vain for some signs of a prisoner, as we had done during each of the four days while we were directly behind the band and at no time more than two miles distant.

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