{"id":2169,"date":"2012-03-01T20:12:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T03:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deathgleaner.wordpress.com\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2016-04-18T12:09:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T19:09:04","slug":"contexual-thesaurus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/contexual-thesaurus\/","title":{"rendered":"If you want to rewrite an entire sentence, try this sentence thesaurus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft <\/a>is well known for their operating system <a title=\"Need a countdown timer? Try this&nbsp;gadget\" href=\"http:\/\/windows.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/home\" target=\"_blank\">Windows<\/a>, their <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.xbox.com\/en-US\/Live\/Partners\/Zune\">Zune HD player<\/span>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xbox.com\/en-US\/\" target=\"_blank\">XBox<\/a>, but did you know they&#8217;re making what&#8217;s called a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/labs.microsofttranslator.com\/thesaurus\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\" rel=\"nofollow\">contextual thesaurus<\/a>?&#8221; It works just like a <a href=\"http:\/\/thesaurus.com\" target=\"_blank\">thesaurus<\/a>, but thesaurusizes entire sentences in one fell swoop.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nIt can be a useful tool for essay assignments. Let&#8217;s take a phrase, put it in the contextual thesaurus, and see what it spits out:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We went to the store yesterday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We go to the shop last night.<\/li>\n<li>We went into the shop last night.<\/li>\n<li>We go to the shop last.<\/li>\n<li>We went into the shop last.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Being made of several pieces of silicon strung together by copper wire, it&#8217;s not perfect, but as most of us have brains and can think for ourselves, the thesaurus is a useful step in improving our sentences.<\/p>\n<p>But wait! It doesn&#8217;t just spit out plain text sentences, it generates a beautiful flow diagram putting the words in bubbles and connecting them with lines. To see it in action, let&#8217;s take the first sentence of Lincoln&#8217;s famous <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/Gettysburg_Address_%28Lincoln_Memorial%29\" target=\"_blank\">Gettysburg Address<\/a>, and see it work its magic:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/geoffliu.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/translator-diagram.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2171 alignnone\" title=\"translator-diagram\" src=\"http:\/\/geoffliu.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/translator-diagram.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"184\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>(note, this is only part of the diagram)<\/p>\n<p>Now, you can see all the different possibilities of rephrasing the sentence. You can even click on a path and it will change the &#8220;translation&#8221; for you!<\/p>\n<p>This thesaurus is a tool that could help you greatly, if you know <a href=\"http:\/\/labs.microsofttranslator.com\/thesaurus\/thesaurusfaq.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\" rel=\"nofollow\">how to use it to its best<\/a>. Go give it a try at <a href=\"http:\/\/labs.microsofttranslator.com\/thesaurus\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/labs.microsofttranslator.com\/thesaurus\/<\/a>, and while you&#8217;re there, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/labs.microsofttranslator.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\" rel=\"nofollow\">the other great things<\/a> that Microsoft is working on.<\/p>\n<address>The contextual translator uses Microsoft Silverlight, which you can download <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/silverlight\/bb187358.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/address>\n<div id=\"geo-post-2169\" class=\"geo geo-post\" style=\"display: none\"><span class=\"latitude\">47.558739<\/span><span class=\"longitude\">-122.409668<\/span><\/div><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft is well known for their operating system Windows, their Zune HD player, and the XBox, but did you know they&#8217;re making what&#8217;s called a &#8220;contextual thesaurus?&#8221; It works just like a thesaurus, but thesaurusizes entire sentences in one fell swoop.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[16,36],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/thesaurus.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Zt3y-yZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5659,"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions\/5659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g-liu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}