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Mining Neologisms from Wikipedia

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the everchanging-face-of-net-slang dept.

holy_calamity writes "Natual Language Programming researchers have developed a tool called Zeitgeist that can discover the meaning of new words for itself using Wikipedia. It looks for entries for words not in the WordNet database and works out their meaning by looking for known words linked to them. Development of the tool is focusing on using it to understand what bloggers (using slang and neologisms) are saying about companies' products."

17 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Garbage collection by throatmonster · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...one entity gathers what another entity spills...

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  2. Id love to see what it came up with... by mdhoover · · Score: 5, Funny

    if they pointed it at slashdot...
    "ass-hat" and "tard" could take on a whole new meaning

    1. Re:Id love to see what it came up with... by Harmonious+Botch · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're assuming that it would be spelled correctly.

    2. Re:Id love to see what it came up with... by truthsearch · · Score: 2, Funny

      You're right. Now that a comment with those words can be attributed to your username mdhoover will forever be synonymous with ass-hat and tard.

      Damn! Now so will truthsearch! Son of a...

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  3. Just imagine... by packetmon · · Score: 3, Funny

    Imagine the chaos and reboots as the program analyzes a George W. Bush speech

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    Infiltrated dot Net
    1. Re:Just imagine... by Snarfangel · · Score: 1, Funny

      Imagine the chaos and reboots as the program analyzes a George W. Bush speech.

      That's just part of his strategery to get people to misunderestimate him.

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  4. say hello to dictionary bombing by brunascle · · Score: 4, Funny

    George W. Bush
    n.
    1. 43rd president of the United States.
    2. miserable failure.

  5. omg it reads L33t? by bombastinator · · Score: 2, Funny

    31g 3r0+her iz wa+ch1ng U!

  6. Re:For slang, it is useles without a context by RubberBaron · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, you gotta admit, it's a wicked idea...

  7. What if it went in to a loop by clickclickdrone · · Score: 5, Funny

    and started creating its own gazornaplatting words that no-one but the program itself could middlybundy? It could eat up bibblys of disk space as all the new words chimmdudlied in a grawn.

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    I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
    1. Re:What if it went in to a loop by sbaker · · Score: 2, Funny

      started creating its own gazornaplatting words

      Gazomplat. Wow! I remember that word from the mid 1970's. Bear with me a moment...

      When I was learning to program in FORTRAN in my high school math class. Our teacher (who didn't know how to program either) was trying to teach us by the age-old process of reading the book one chapter ahead of the class she was teaching. As a consequence, she was no better at it than the rest of us and we ended up debugging her code about as often as she helped with debugging ours.

      Anyway, she was trying to write a program to sort words into alphabetical order - and something went horribly wrong and the program spat out a series of nonense words made up by chopping up and reordering the words it was given. Most of them were unpronouncable garbage but a couple sounded like real words.

      Gazomplat was one of them. It's such a nice sounding word that it's usage spread through the math class and beyond - since it had no meaning, it could be stuck into conversation at any convenient point. So it's use as a verb: "Gazomplatting" is entirely appropriate.

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  8. Re:slashdotting (n., neolog.) by Alex+P+Keaton+in+da · · Score: 2, Funny

    Slashdotting is slashdotting. It is irritating that they are trying to rename it "the Digg or Fark effect." If Digg or Fark cause a site to get hammered, it should still ne called slashdotting. Why? Because we (this community) are the originals, and still, in my opinion, the best.
    By the way, I have an odd problem with the word neology. Why? Because in my 7th grade Latin Class, one of our assignments was to be a neologist, using latin roots to make up a new word. So the word neology makes me think of 7th grade. And 7th grade (well, much like now) was a time when I was especially awkward...

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  9. chance by Jon+Luckey · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sounds like a excellect chance to inject some new perfectly cromulent words into wide use.

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    -- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
    1. Re:chance by shotgunsaint · · Score: 2, Funny

      You've embiggened the Wikipedia with your cromulent entry.

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      The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
  10. Step One is Complete by Hoplite3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Time for step two: deliver a mild electric shock to neologism users. Then I won't have to hear "blogosphere" ever again.

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    Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
  11. Santorum! by mr_stinky_britches · · Score: 4, Funny

    One of my personal favorites is the word Santorum.

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  12. Re:Hello? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mod parent doubleplusspiffy.