Abbreviations and Acronyms of the U.S. Government
A very handy tool when your CERCLIS gets tangled up with your NESDIS, or your NREVSS steps on the toes of your ORACBA. Includes links to the hundreds of government agencies listed. CIAO (Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office).
Acronym Finder
If you don’t know your LMAO from your IMHO, check out Acronym Finder, which claims to be “the web’s most comprehensive database of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms” with “207,000+ definitions!”
Adbusters
A great print magazine and website dedicated to throwing a wrench in the works of the great advertising machine rototilling our culture. “We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.” Check out their spoof ads, such as Reality for Men and a great Gap parody.
Anagram Server (Wordsmith.org)
They call it variously the Internet Anagram Server or the “I Rearrangement Service,” depending on caffeine level fluctions. Go to town, friend. Or: God written of no.
Baby Name Wizard
Cool dynamic graphical display of baby names from 1900 to the present and their U.S. popularity rankings, along with name lists and other baby name resources.
Cliché Finder
This right as rain resource puts its money where its mouth is: a searchable index of over 3,300 clichés and a button to get ten random clichés at a time. Follow your nose to the grindstone and check it out – Cliché Finder shines like a diamond in a goat’s ass!
Company Name Etymologies
A handy reference list on Wikipedia.
Creative Writing Resource Guide
You don’t have to be an aspiring author or an English major to be proficient at creative writing. Here you will find tools, resources, and opportunities to bring out your creative side as a writer.
Dictionary of Difficult Words
“Do you aim to become a member of the literati, or do you wish to be a savant? Do you want to avoid being verbigerative and be succinct instead? Search the Hutchinson Dictionary of Difficult Words’ A-Z index of over 13,900 difficult words to increase your vocabulary or just find out what those words really mean!”
Dictionary.com
Need a dictionary, thesaurus, or grammar help? It’s all here online, and it’s free.
Engrish.com
Bringing you Engrish favorites from Japan and around the world. Ex: Mr. Friendly. He always stays near you and steals in you mind tolead you into a good shituation.
e-Normicom
“Any to any. End to end.” A great parody of New Economy branding agencies that will create an entire identity for your company, complete with name, tagline, swoosh logo and focus goup testing in ten minutes flat.
Funny Boat Names
A great list of Funny Boat Names in multiple categories from All Things Boat.
Geoffrey Nunberg
Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, author, and the commentator on all things linguistic for NPR’s Fresh Air.
Global Language Monitor
Monitoring the world’s languages.
Jargon File
The Jargon File is “a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.” The print version is called The New Hacker’s Dictionary. Includes a fine section called “Jargon Construction” illuminating “some standard methods of jargonification” that hackers employ. Not to mention the fabulous lexicon of thousands of great hacker terms. Be sure to read the entry for snark.
Jay Jurisich
The art and writing portfolio site of Jay Jurisich, Wordlab’s co-founder (@snark) and the Founder/Creative Director of the great naming and branding agency Zinzin. Stains, art, chance, indeterminacy, words and language made visual.
Language Is A Virus
“Language is a virus from outer space…” — William S Burroughs. This site features: “Writing toys, games & gizmoz to inspire your creativity! Text generators! Cut up machines!”
Lost in Translation
What happens when an English phrase is translated back and forth between 5 different languages? Don’t count your chickens before they hatch becomes: You do not consider his polli, before that one that cuts. Check it out with the Translation Babelizer.
OneLook
OneLook is the best “meta dictionary” we’ve ever found. Think of this website as a search engine for words and phrases: If you have a word for which you’d like a definition or translation, OneLook will quickly shuttle you to the web-based dictionaries that define or translate that word. If you don’t know the right word to use, OneLook will help you find it. No word is too obscure: More than 5 million words in more than 900 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook® search engine.
Prototype Worlds: A Glossary of Science Fiction Jargon
Prototype Worlds is a glossary of SF coinages, collected for the enjoyment and education of SF fans, SF writers, lexicographers, and linguists.
pseudodictionary
This is a cool site, very similar to what WordLab is all about, except that users can add their own “slang, webspeak, and colloquialisms,” the junk is edited out, and the rest is posted to the site. Currently there are 11383 live words in pseudodictionary, and 72 awaiting approval, but by the time you read this there will likely be more.
The Skettionary
An online West Indian Dictionary that grows with submissions from users. One entry that we’ve taken to heart:
liming, v. (lye-ming)
Trinidad & Tobago
1. The art of doing nothing
Lots more good stuff here.
US Patent & Trademark Office
Now that you’ve found just the right name from WordLab, check here to run a free preliminary trademark screen.
Word Spy
“This Web site is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren’t ‘stunt words’ or ‘sniglets,’ but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources.”
WordConstructor
“Are you looking for a random word or do you want to generate a nickname? Do you need a domain name, a name for your child, company, pet or band? Use this random word generator to generate new words or change existing ones.”
Wordcounter
“Wordcounter ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. Use this to see what words you overuse, or maybe just to find some keywords from a document.” Someone out there will probably point out that this can be simply done in Word with Tab #2,307 of the Tools–> Options–> Words–> Accessories–> Counters–> Behaviors –> Tally menu, but in case you can’t find that, or MS pulled the plug on your copy, try Wordcounter.
WordNet
“WordNet® is an online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets.”
Writing Games
“Games to Help you stray from the Straight and Narrrow…. What follows is a collection of generative devices to use for writing which is not narrative based.”
Zinzin
Zinzin is a naming and branding agency that creates powerful product and company names to propel and differentiate brands beyond their competition. Zinzin wants to set your brand free. The Zinzin website has many features to help you get a handle on the naming process, including the Naming Guide and Manifesto PDFs available for free download.