July 9, 2008


Thsrs

A thesaurus for short synonyms. Ironic Sans:

Popular new social networking services like Twitter, where users write extremely short messages about whatever’s on their minds, present a challenge: How can you intelligently get across a complex thought in just 140 characters without needing to use ugly abbreviations (e.g. “w/o needing 2 use ugly abbrev’s”)?

If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is: Thsrs, the thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you’re looking up. Just enter one of the longer words in your message, and Thsrs will suggest shorter words to use instead.

(Hat tip to fimoculous)

posted by Andrew Simone in language, web sites 

comments

6 Responses to “Thsrs”

  1. jandek on July 9th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    I wonder how many ways I can misappropriate this.

    I mean, how many ways I can use this bad.

  2. Sheila Ryan on July 9th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    I plan to rewrite selected late works of Henry James.

  3. Mike D. on July 9th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    This can be used for a fun sort of algorithmic text reduction, a linguistic Droste effect. I wish I had the programming chops to put it all together, but doing it manually allows one to control for semantic similarity and make grammatical adjustments as necessary.

    After a couple cycles through the wash, the opening lines of Clusterflock’s About transform from:

    clusterflock is: thoughts, questions, original art and content and links to stuff we think is of interest; a group blog dedicated to pretty much everything.

    to:

    cluster flock is: airs, queries, hot art and things and ties to rot we wish was of profit; a group blog used for jolly much everything.

    I’m not sure which version I like better, nevermind which is a more accurate description.

  4. Mike D. on July 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    And by separating the site’s compound name, then giving it the same treatment, everyone could be saved a lot of typing while maintaining the gist.

    clumpwad, anyone?

  5. Amy Mabli on July 9th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    “hot art and things and ties to rot we wish was of profit”

    love that!

  6. Sheila Ryan on July 9th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    Amy said it first, but I don’t mind repeating. I love that “hot art and things and ties to rot we wish was of profit”.

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