lmjones@watsol.waterloo.edu (08/28/89)
``dearpat'' - An on-line data service The Centre for the New OED and Text Research has created an on-line service to provide information from our database. Our data files include: The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition The bibliography for the OED The Bible - King James Version including Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary,3rd edition William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (on order) Queries can be sent by electronic mail to dearpat@watmath. We will try to answer queries as quickly and accurately as possible although sometimes the amount of data or research may be prohibitive. Some sample queries and responses follow: dearpat I would like to know how many times the word ``hound'' and ``dog'' are used in the Sherlock Holmes story ``The Hound of the Baskervilles''. response The word `hound' appears in the ``Hound of Basker- villes'' 74 times while `dog' occurs only 31 times. A further interesting point is that of the 31 occcurrences of `dog', 6 are the verb `to dog' as ``he had dogged us so long'', 2 are in the compound `dog-cart' and many others do not refer to the `hound'. *** dearpat I am interested in millennial vocabulary and would like to know of the occurrrences of such words as ``apocalypse'', ``armageddon'' and ``doomsday'' in the Bible. response The ``millennial'' vocabulary, as you refer to it, is not very common in the Bible. The words `apocalypse' and `doomsday' do not occur in the Bible at all whereas `armageddon' is found only once, in Revela- tions: 16:16. In general, the hellfire and brimstone vocabulary is very limited in the Bible: for example, compare the following frequencies of patterns: heaven 853, hell 64; saved 126, damn (including damned and damnation) 16; good 1148, evil 748; lord 8794, devil 122. *** dearpat Can you please tell me all of the words in English that begin with the sound ``fa'' as in ``fat'' whether they begin with a `f' or a `ph'? response On referring to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionay,3rd edition, a dictionary that includes everyday official and informal language as well as literary language of the 19th and 20th centuries, I find that there are 73 words that begin with the sound ``fa'' as in ``fat''. I will send you a com- plete list of these words. A partial one follows here: factual, famine, fancy, fascinate, phantasm, Pharisee, pharynx. *** dearpat I would like a list of all the words that have entered the English language from Malay. Can you compile such a list from the Oxford English Diction- ary? response The pattern ``Malay...'' (i.e. any word that begins with the sequence Malay) occurs in the OED2 1660 times. Of these occurrences, 256 are in the etymol- ogy: the section of the dictionary that deals with the origin and history of a word. Even if a language is mentioned in the etymology, it does not neces- sarily mean that it is the language of origin. If however, the language is mentioned at the beginning of the etymology, it is more likely to be so. In the case of Malay, 235 of the 256 occurrences of Malay are in the first line of the etymology. Thus, I am sending you two lists: one with the all the words that have Malay in the etymology and one with the words that do not have Malay in the first line (a subset of the first). For scholarly purposes, I recommend a thorough analysis of the words and etymo- logies in order to determine the actual origin. A partial list is included here: amok, bamboo, Cajan, dugong, godown, junk, ketchup, lingo, mango, orang- outang, palanquin, rattan, sago, teak,zamorin. *** dearpat I am studying the works of William Makepeace Thack- eray and have noticed that he seems to invent words. I am wondering if any of the words that appear in the OED have been used only be him? response I have checked the ``Hapax Legomena'' file which includes all the words with only one citation in the OED2 and find that there are 69 from Thackeray. I am sending you a complete list and the following is a sample only: airwards, birdikin, crucificial, lordkin, portify, unadroitly, whipping-snapping. Please note, although there is only one citation, this is not conclusive proof that the forms were `invented' by Thackeray. In fact, one might say that Thackeray did not so much invent words as played with linguistic conventions to create new forms of old words. *** dearpat I would like some information from the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. Could you please tell me if the Canadian General Electric is mentioned in the docu- ment. response Although many companies are named in this document, the Canadian General Electric (CGE, GE, General Elec- tric) is not referred to. This does not mean that it is not included in more general terms but only that it is not specifically named. *** dearpat Can you please make a list of all the words that relate to clothing? response This query is not as simple as it appears. Articles of clothing are not labelled as such in the diction- ary and might be defined without the use of the word `clothing': descriptions such as `garment', `apparel', `headgear', and `outerwear' may indicate `clothing' in the definition. For example, the Japanese word yukata is described as a `light kimono' or a `housecoat'. Because of the time that would be involved in defining and carrying out such a search, ``dearpat'' is unable to give you a response. ***
daford@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel Ford) (08/29/89)
Can we use this service for solving cross-word puzzles? Such as: "What 10 letter words have a 'z' as the fourth letter and end with 'ious'?" Dan
tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray) (08/29/89)
Lindsay Patten writes: >Is there any online access to the NOED for the general unix community? In general, the OED database is available to UW personnel for purposes of research and teaching. Right now, you have to get an account on the computer 'watsol'. However, DCS is planning to extend that availability via some big Sun meat-grinder they are buying. >Even >if were something as simple as a mail server which answered queries like > >mail noed@sol >entry pedantic >. > >and sent back mail giving the dictionary entry for pedantic. Well, yes and and no. We were originally thinking about doing just that, but if you just want to look up the entry, OED may not be the dictionary for you. Since it has *everything* about *everything* back to 1150 A.D., a simple request can have an unreasonably-huge answer. Also, the entries are densely populated with structural codes that are not immediately self-evident in their import. To illustrate my point without unduly cluttering up the net, I will mail the entry for 'pedantic' to anybody who requests it of me (tbray@watsol). One of the reasons for the recently-announced 'dearpat' service is to try to figure out what kinds of questions people would ask if they could ask. >Of course, >a fancy window based browser system would be even nicer. Yes, in fact the only sane thing. We have such an interface, and for those with X screens, it will probably be available via the DCS service I mentioned above. Daniel Ford writes: >Can we use this service for solving cross-word puzzles? >Such as: "What 10 letter words have a 'z' as the fourth letter and end with >'ious'?" Well, the existing query tools aren't optimized for this kind of question, which means you'd have to write a lex program or something and wait a couple hours for the answer. Who knows, maybe there's some interesting research in devising and implementing an efficient interface to support the needs of crossword puzzlers? Cheers, Tim Bray, New OED Project