You know when you know there’s a word, but you can’t for the life of you think of it? I give you the OneLook Reverse Dictionary.
Here’s the description:
“OneLook’s reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word.”
The site offers this example from the world of law: Enter the query, “being tried twice for the same crime,” and get back a list of results headed by “double jeopardy.”
I tried “the protagonist in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Top among the results: Robert Jordan.
The reverse dictionary is part of OneLook Dictionary Search, a search engine that claims to index more than 5 million words in more than 900 online dictionaries.
Never again look cross at a crossword puzzle.