Lexipedia : A Cool 21st Century Tool… But What’s A Fuzzynym??

Have you ever found a new tool that was really neat, even though you didn’t understand it completely. I came across such a tool in the beta phase called Lexipedia. I think it is one that will especially be appealing to those teachers of Language Arts. Now for the part I did not understand, or better yet, I will include it in the post below.  Read on …  – Mike

There is no doubt that Lexipedia is a very cool tool! In fact it describes itself as a site “where words have meaning”. Upon inspection, I found that most words entered return a multiple list of definitions. Teachers attempting to convey parts of speech to their students are in for a real treat. Foreign language teachers (English, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Italian) will be amazed to find a tool that can be used in their classrooms. Lexipedia does an amazing job of taking  each word entered and returning not just definitions.  It categorizes the words by parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, and adverb). It then takes the parts of speech and tries to find relationships including  synonyms, antonyms and fuzzynyms. Hold on… “fuzzynyms”!

Yes, as I was typing the word fuzzynym in my post,  WordPress underlined “fuzzynym” with a big red line as if I had spelled it wrong!  There was no way I could spell a word wrong in my post!  My first thought was, “I am not an English major… so maybe I should look up “fuzzynym”!  I went to Merriam-Webster.com and asked for a definition …  momentarily it returned, “The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary”. I then visited Wikipedia where someone must have an idea. I was amazed as Wikipedia returned “no result”. As I googled the word “fuzzynym” I was amazed to find 9,910 results. I could not find a site that gave a clear definition, but did find quite a few references to Lexipedia. Then it finally occurred to me; why not type the word “fuzzynym”  into Lexipedia? I entered the Lexipedia site with excitement and a sense of relief. I hit the letters on my keyboard f-u-z-z-y-n-y-m… I waited… The response appeared… NOTHING!

OK, I could not figure out a real definition for “fuzzynym”.  It does appears that it may be a word that is related, but does not fit the category of antonym or synonym. Regardless, Lexipedia is an fantastic site with great educational potential. It will  definitely help students with definitions and the understanding of parts of speech. It is an awesome tool that will facilitate young writers attempting to make their essays more interesting with a great data base of antonyms and synonyms.  I can even envision effective ways for teachers to incorporate Lexipedia into their lessons. It is time for you to take a moment to look at this powerful tool. Also, please leave a comment if you can help me better define  “fuzzynym”.

Thanks for stopping by and as always please follow me on Twitter (mjgormans), I will follow back and we will learn from each other. Also feel free to visit my 21centuryedtech Wiki filled with some amazing free resources for 21st century learning!  Have a wonderful week – Mike