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A comment on What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define all other words? (2012). Parent comment

Re:What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define a... by excalibur on Thursday March 07, 2019 @03:41PM (#19332133)
But you will come across a lot of words used in definitions that could easily be replaced with more common words. In some cases the change to the definition would be tiny, in others it might be more significant.
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Re:What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define a... by cpeterso on Thursday March 07, 2019 @03:55PM (#19332295)
I'd like to see a DAG of WordNet, a database of English synonyms. Mapping single word synonyms solves the problem of common words in definitions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordNet

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Re:What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define a... by rijoja on Friday March 08, 2019 @07:17AM (#19336886)
Came here to say exactly the same! Great minds think alike!
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Re:What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define a... by oh_sigh on Thursday March 07, 2019 @03:52PM (#19332262)
It seems like a good start. Once you do that, you could start finding vertices with large amounts of incoming edges, attempt to redefine the word as a phrase composed of only words still in the graph, remove that vertex, and repeat.
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Re:What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define a... by clhodapp on Thursday March 07, 2019 @03:58PM (#19332347)
That will get you much closer but it does ignore the ability to apply creativity to definitions to further reduce them. In the end, a machine-driven technique can give an approximate answer to this problem but it will never be the "perfect" answer.
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