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). For those interested, I also developed Describing Words which helps you find adjectives and interesting descriptors for things (e.g. So this project, Reverse Dictionary, is meant to go hand-in-hand with Related Words to act as a word-finding and brainstorming toolset. 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. 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. So in a sense, this tool is a "search engine for words", or a sentence to word converter. It acts a lot like a thesaurus except that it allows you to search with a definition, rather than a single word. 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). For example, if you type something like "longing for a time in the past", then the engine will return "nostalgia". It simply looks through tonnes of dictionary definitions and grabs the ones that most closely match your search query. Another way to help you decide is to remember that lay will typically be followed by a noun, whereas lie will typically be followed by the word down.The way Reverse Dictionary works is pretty simple. The a sound in lay sounds like the one in place, as in to place an object, whereas the i sound in lie sounds like the one in recline, as in to recline on a sofa. A classroom trick is to say the word out loud. Your best bet when deciding between the variations of lay and lie is to determine whether there is a direct object you’re referring to. Lay: I was laying the blanket on the floor. Lied, however, refers to the past tense and past participle form of lie when it means “to make an untrue statement.” Many people accidentally use lied instead of lain when using the verb lie. The past participle form is a common point of error. Lie: I had lain there for some time before getting up. Lay: She had laid the blanket down before she left. So when you say, “I lay down for a nap,” you’re actually using the verb lie, not lay, despite the way it sounds. The past tense of lie is lay, but not because there is any overlap between the two verbs. Lay: She laid the blanket on the floor when I asked. The difference in the present tense seems pretty straightforward: lay refers to a direct object, and lie does not. Lie: This stuff is pretty groundbreaking you’d better lie down. Lay: Unfold the blanket and lay it on the floor. As for the misconceptions, well, when you look at the two verbs next to each other in different tenses, it becomes a bit more obvious where the confusion is. In other words, lay takes a direct object, and lie does not. Lay is a verb that commonly means “to put or set (something) down.” Lie is a verb that commonly means “to be in or to assume a horizontal position” (or “to make an untrue statement,” but we’ll focus on the first definition). One of the many common misunderstandings within the language stems from the confusion between lay and lie. It’s so full of extraneous words and rules, so fantastically complicated and confusing.
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