I admit it. I’m terminally unhip – at least when it comes to the latest, hottest, hippest, social media-esque uses of the language. In fact, I still think “sick” and “phat” are sorta bad things, which suggests somebody should take my blogging keys away from me.

Fortunately, Web 2.0 offers help even to the sad wordsmiths like myself: introducing Wordnik (found via Lifehacker, which had this to say about it):

Its value service, however, is the extra context provided by highlighted Twitter posts, Flickr photos, related tags, and other multimedia on the results page. It’s all spread out on a single multi-column page, but you can hit the sub-menus near the top to get a full page of any of them. Statistic geeks can also see how often words are being used online and the number of look-ups on Wordnik for a word. The site could be helpful for when you’ve got to get up to speed on something quickly and get a bit deeper than just a brief explainer.

There you have it Undergrounders: Words, served up Twitter/Flickr/Social Media style.

But before you type a word in the box, ask yourself this: Will it really help to know how a 13 year-old girl mangles a word? Just asking.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

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Posted in Underground Entertainment, Writer tools and tagged , .