Adjectives with the word heart

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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In the older drama, Clare, the original of Celinda, dies tragically of a broken heart.

But just then the confiding songster began to sing, and after listening to his summery melody the charmed hunter turned away, saying, «Bless your little heart, I can’t shoot you, not even for Tom.

The adventurer was soon supplied with a sufficient quantity of gold and jewels to satisfy his most unbounded wishes; and turning from the spot with a light heart, he sped merrily along.

« «Well,« said Spalding, resuming his narrative, «some fifty years ago, two enterprising men (brothers) marched into the woods in the town of Mexico, now in Oswego county, with their axes on their shoulders, and stout hearts beating in their bosoms.

She had greeted me as girl greets her lover, but was that any more than the revulsion from fear and the pity of a tender heart?

«Calabar needs a brave heart and a strong body,« said Mary.

One day, soon afterwards, I met my old friend, Mr. Russell, to whom I related all my troubles, and his generous heart was touched by my story.

I ones thought I could never take a locker to this ‘ere honest old heart, but as I cast my gaze over this audience, and observe among the Bulls and Bears, a cuple of Dears, I will retract that, payin‘ in the follerin‘ Jew de spree: Come rest on this buzzum, Oh! butiful broker, With your arms clinchin‘ tite, This innercent choker.

So the work of a great scientist, a potent benefactor of the race, a gentle and kindly old heart, has brought about the death of your friends and of my enemies.

The King‘s affairs require no slackening hand, And our sad hearts their feelings can’t command.

Vincy really concealed under an amiable and gentle exterior the kindest heart of any man in London.

For she I seek is a woman, gentle and prone to forgiveness, one beyond all women fair and brave and noble, in whose pure heart can nothing evil be, in whose gentle eyes her gentle soul lieth mirrored, whose tender lips be apt and swift to speak mercy and forgiveness.

Ah, my Erminia, might I hope at last To share the pity of that lovely Breast, By slow degrees I might approach that Throne, Where now the blest Philander reigns alone: Perhaps in time my Passion might redeem That now too faithful Heart y’ave given to him;

He had quit it in a fashion that left a rankling sorrow in his grateful heart.

Evadne had sung her message, while she folded its leaves of healing down over her own sore heart, and human love had paled before the exquisite beauty of the love of God! CHAPTER XXVIII.

In their secret hearts his two companions were more than half inclined to follow this suggestion; but there is a form of cowardice to which even the bravest are subjectnamely, the fear of being thought afraid and it was this, perhaps, which decided them to advance instead of retreat.

Forward leapt the swift cruiser, all too slow for the anxious hearts of those aboard.

Hang Titles; ‘twas my self you lov’d, my amiable sweet and charming self: In fine, sweet—heart, I am your Husband; no Viscount, but honest Guiliom, the Chimney—sweeper.

Everybody knew that she was poor, and she knew that everybody knew it; yet so long as she was not in absolute want, and the poor—house, that bugbear of honest poverty, was yet far distant, she managed to keep a cheerful heart, and visited her neighbors on terms of entire equality.

Her fond heart told her that the perilous journey was over, and her darling boy was safe.

For a moment she wondered if perhaps he came to reprove her for too many questionings, and rose up and advanced a little towards him with folded hands and a thankful heart, to receive the reproof if it should be so,for whether it were praise or whether it were blame, it was from the Father, and a great honor and happiness to receive.

The comforter whom we need is not one who will merely say kind things, but give helphelp to the weary and heavy laden heart which has no time to rest.

So he tore out a fly—leaf from the big Bible, and jotted down notes of the meeting,»An outpouring of the loyal heart of West Virginia,»and yawned, ready for bed, contented with the world, himself, and God.

My heart‘s weak at the best of times an‘ the weather in there was pretty stormy.

They are purple and fathomless like the ocean, and when a man looks into them too long his sanity grows weak, and sinks and drowns in their cool depths, and the man must babble out his foolish heart to you.