It’s maddening when you can think of the first word of a phrase but not the second (or vice-versa). Are there any sites that you can plug in a word and it will return a list of the most common words associated with your sample word? For example if one entered “spaghetti” it would return spaghetti and meatballs, spaghetti western, spaghetti monster, etc.
Auto-complete, enabled by default in the popular search engines these days, will do just that. Enter “spaghetti”, then hit the space bar, and a list of common searches that start with that word should pop up.
How about this reverse dictionary? Your example of spaghetti gave this list:
- pasta
- budget
- spaghettilike
- tomato
- vermicelli
- bolognese pasta sauce
- carbonara
- marinara
- meatball
- meatballs
- spaghetti and meatballs
- spaghettini
- tomato sauce
- spaghetti squash
- au gratin
- durum
- leone
- oreg
- oregano
- pasta sauce
- paste
- pesto
- plate
- ragu
- semolina
- spaghetti sauce
- spaghetti western
- twirl
- wheat
Google used to have a Labs product called Google Sets, which was fun to play with, which gave similar results. It’s gone now, boo.
http://wordassociations.net/ seems to do a pretty good job, bringing back a range of results, and http://www.humanbraincloud.com/ seems like a bit of fun too…