Word for sign of the times

The way Reverse Dictionary works is pretty simple. It simply looks through tonnes of dictionary definitions and grabs the ones that most closely match your search query. For example, if you type something like «longing for a time in the past», then the engine will return «nostalgia». The engine has indexed several million definitions so far, and at this stage it’s starting to give consistently good results (though it may return weird results sometimes). It acts a lot like a thesaurus except that it allows you to search with a definition, rather than a single word. So in a sense, this tool is a «search engine for words», or a sentence to word converter.

I made this tool after working on Related Words which is a very similar tool, except it uses a bunch of algorithms and multiple databases to find similar words to a search query. That project is closer to a thesaurus in the sense that it returns synonyms for a word (or short phrase) query, but it also returns many broadly related words that aren’t included in thesauri. So this project, Reverse Dictionary, is meant to go hand-in-hand with Related Words to act as a word-finding and brainstorming toolset. For those interested, I also developed Describing Words which helps you find adjectives and interesting descriptors for things (e.g. waves, sunsets, trees, etc.).

In case you didn’t notice, you can click on words in the search results and you’ll be presented with the definition of that word (if available). The definitions are sourced from the famous and open-source WordNet database, so a huge thanks to the many contributors for creating such an awesome free resource.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: Elastic Search, @HubSpot, WordNet, and @mongodb.

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“Sign of the Times” is a slow paced pop-rock track about avoiding emotion and reality during times of grief and hardship. The song draws inspiration from ‘70s rock songs from artists like David Bowie and Queen.

The track is Harry Styles’ debut solo single after releasing five studio albums and going on four world tours with the global sensation pop band One Direction. “Sign of the Times” is also the lead single from Harry’s debut self-titled album and was released on April 7, 2017, over a year after One Direction began their hiatus.

The track was teased through television ads, though the release date and title were later announced by Styles on Twitter along with the cover art on March 31, 2017, which aptly coincided the 30th anniversary of Prince’s ninth studio album, Sign O’ the Times. Although Harry’s song shares a name with a song of Prince’s, the similarities do not continue beyond that. A collaborator of Prince’s, Sheena Easton, has even stated that the “Purple maestro” would have approved.

“Sign of the Times” debuted atop UK Official Singles chart with the #1 slot and landed #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 after only the first week of tracking. Harry taking the top position on the UK charts meant that he had dethroned his friend Ed Sheeran, who had spent the thirteen previous weeks in that #1 slot. To accompany the song’s debut, a two hour pre-recorded interview done with Harry’s close friend Nick Grimshaw was aired on BBC Radio 1.

“Sign of the Times” made its live TV debut on Saturday Night Live on April 15, 2017, the first episode of the show to be aired across the entirety of The United States of America simultaneously. Harry performed a second song, a new track released with his album on May 12, 2017, titled “Ever Since New York”.

The music video for this song was released on May 8, 2017 and depicted Styles flying through the air above mountains and walking on water. Upon release, the music video shot to the #8 slot on the YouTube trending list.