# Any sites for completing two or three word combinations?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sites-for-completing-two-or-three-word-combinations/726696>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 1, 2015, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sites-for-completing-two-or-three-word-combinations/726696 "2015-08-01T00:26:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2015, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sites-for-completing-two-or-three-word-combinations/726696/1 "2015-08-01T00:26:02Z")

</div>

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.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![biqu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@biqu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/biqu)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2015, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sites-for-completing-two-or-three-word-combinations/726696/2 "2015-08-01T00:48:20Z")

</div>

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.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![araminty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b5e925/32.png) [@araminty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/araminty)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sites-for-completing-two-or-three-word-combinations/726696/3 "2015-08-01T01:04:31Z")

</div>

How about this [reverse dictionary](http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml)? Your example of spaghetti gave this list:

1. pasta
2. budget
3. spaghettilike
4. tomato
5. vermicelli
6. bolognese pasta sauce
7. carbonara
8. marinara
9. meatball
10. meatballs
11. spaghetti and meatballs
12. spaghettini
13. tomato sauce
14. spaghetti squash
15. au gratin
16. durum
17. leone
18. oreg
19. oregano
20. pasta sauce
21. paste
22. pesto
23. plate
24. ragu
25. semolina
26. spaghetti sauce
27. spaghetti western
28. twirl
29. 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.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jesta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Jesta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jesta)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2015, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sites-for-completing-two-or-three-word-combinations/726696/4 "2015-08-01T15:50:46Z")

</div>

[http://wordassociations.net/](http://wordassociations.net/) seems to do a pretty good job, bringing back a range of results, and [http://www.humanbraincloud.com/](http://www.humanbraincloud.com/) seems like a bit of fun too…