Random Word Generator

How the Random Word Generator (Noun, Verb, Adjective Filters) works

How the random word generator picks words

A random word is the smallest creative prompt there is, and the part-of-speech filter is what makes it useful, because a writing exercise wants a noun to build a scene on, a verb to set it moving and an adjective to colour it, and a game like charades or Pictionary wants concrete nouns that can be acted or drawn and nothing else. The noun list is concrete things, cat, lantern, lighthouse, chosen so that every one makes a picture, since abstract nouns make poor prompts; the verb list is actions in the base form, run, wander, contemplate, so they drop into "the word is to..." and into a sentence frame; the adjective list is descriptive words that can sit before any of the nouns; and the adverb list is manners of doing, so a verb-and-adverb pair, wander gently, procrastinate magnificently, is a stage direction. The length filter splits each list into short words of one syllable and up to five letters, medium words of two or three syllables, and long words of four or more, which matters for children's games, for hangman and crosswords, for a spelling test and for a design mock-up that needs words of a certain width; the adjective-and-noun pair gives a two-word phrase that is a story seed or a placeholder title, and the verb-and-adverb pair gives an instruction for an improvisation game.

The words are common English with no proper nouns, no slang and nothing rude, chosen for being easy to spell, easy to picture and safe for a classroom, so the lists are shorter than a dictionary by design; a dictionary-sized random word is mostly words nobody knows, which is the opposite of a prompt. The draw is uniform within the chosen filter, so short and long words are equally likely within a length and each word in a list is equally likely on every draw.

For a random letter, the Random letter page; for a random object to draw or describe, the Random object page; for a random animal, job or hobby, those pages; for a three-word name made of words like these, the Passphrase-style name page; for a proper passphrase from a Diceware list, the Passphrase generator in the Computing section; and for a whole writing prompt rather than a word, the Story prompt page in the Media section.

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