Bot that uses deep neural networks to generate plausible definitions of words
The first definition seemed promising:<p>&gt;Venprigon<p>&gt;<p>&gt;a city in SW Russia, on the River Danube; pop. 123,600<p>&gt;(est. 2002).<p>No reason I wouldn&#x27;t accept it.  In particular the Danube flows through Russia (edit: apparently not, but Russia borders it and is mentioned in the Danube article).  Why not.  The name seems Russian enough to my ears (don&#x27;t speak it) and the population given is small enough that I wouldn&#x27;t have heard of it (if it had said 10 million that would be a give-away).  Pass with flying colors to someone not great at Geography.  Probably NOT a pass to someone who knows Geography well, as the Danube does not flow through Russia.  10&#x2F;10 for me.<p>But it drops off immediately:<p>&gt;onomierren<p>&gt;<p>&gt;n. [mass noun] a disease caused by a strong feeling of blurred and deceptive movements of the teeth.<p>&gt;<p>&gt;mid 19th century: from INO- ‘one’ + Greek meros ‘marriage’.<p>The whole definition is completely non-sensical, this is a 0&#x2F;10.  It doesn&#x27;t make sense for a disease to be &quot;caused by a feeling&quot; (feelings aren&#x27;t ever listed as causes of disease, but rather as symptoms) and the feeling of blurred &quot;vision&quot; might maybe make sense if someone isn&#x27;t reading carefully, but blurred, and deceptive, movement of teeth doesn&#x27;t even pass the least attentive reading.  The fact that it&#x27;s listed as a mass noun is okay (lots of diseases are), but the etymology isn&#x27;t even trying: INO- doesn&#x27;t mean one in any medical language (everyone knows it&#x27;s mono, or maybe uni-), ino- isn&#x27;t even in the word onomierren, meros isn&#x27;t Greek for marriage , and even if it were, what the hell wuould &quot;one marriage&quot; have to do with a disease caused by the movement of teeth.  This is a 0&#x2F;10.<p>The next one:<p>&gt;clapter<p>&gt;<p>&gt;n. a person who delivers a clapted book, especially a computer file or television programme or a program.<p>since I don&#x27;t know what a clapted book is, it sound plausible until the repetition &quot;or television program or a program&quot;, neither of which sounds like something one would deliver.  If it just said &quot;a person who delivers a clapted book&quot; I might find it plausible.  5&#x2F;10.<p>&gt;fengler<p>&gt;<p>&gt;n. a person who fengles or shares a fengue.<p>10&#x2F;10.  I don&#x27;t know what a fengle is but this seems perfectly plausible to me.<p>&gt;ambistrate<p>&gt;<p>&gt;n. [BIOLOGY] a plant or animal that is extremely hard or wide, as in a small or more liquid or gland.<p>&gt;<p>&gt;early 18th century: from Latin ambistratus, from ambi- ‘money’ + stare ‘to stand’.<p>Again this is completely non-sensical.  Ambistrate sure sounds like a word, specifically a verb, but it is then listed as a noun.  Well okay.  A plant OR animal?  Weird.  That is extremely hard OR wide?  Okay.  And then it just drops off to complete random garbage &quot;as in a small or more liquid or gland.&quot;  You can&#x27;t even parse that grammatically.  It&#x27;s just random words.<p>The etymology sucks, ambi- doesn&#x27;t mean money (ambiguous? ambivalent? ambidextrous? etc), stare sounds okay to me.<p>This is like a 1&#x2F;10.<p>&gt;forepiscate<p>&gt;<p>&gt;n. [BIOLOGY] a plant or animal that foresees or is produced by a foreperson.<p>&gt;<p>&gt;forepiscitic adj. forepiscity n.<p>seems completely improbable, firstly for a plant to be able to foresee, this word (foresee) would have to have some meaning I don&#x27;t know - and secondly, the definition says that a foreperson can produce such a plant.  This is garbage, 1&#x2F;10.<p>&gt;salakala<p>&gt;<p>&gt;n. [mass noun] a Japanese colour like that of salad colour.<p>&gt;<p>&gt;Italian, literally ‘salted pepper’, from Latin salus ‘salt’.<p>again all over the place.  we don&#x27;t talk of &quot;salad colors&quot;, and if it&#x27;s a japanese color (which salakala sounds like it could be) why is it given an Italian etymology.  Completely implausible, 1&#x2F;10.<p>&gt;quanspor<p>&gt;<p>&gt;n. a small round board on a plane figure with a slightly unstable joint.<p>&gt;<p>&gt;late 18th century: from Latin, ‘born’.<p>I guess the definition could sort-of make sense, but born in Latin is something around natus (nativity scene) or something with nasc- like &quot;nascent&quot;, or reNaissance (rebirth), or that sort of thing.  This quanspor crap doesn&#x27;t share a single syllable.<p>Like 5&#x2F;10 due to the technical jointmaking definition being nearly plausible to me.<p>In sum, I would say this program does an <i>extremely</i> poor job of deep learning.  Since Greek and Latin stems are in many ways predictable (after all, lots of new words have been coined with them) it should do a much better job of etymology and word construction.  Then, too, it doesn&#x27;t derive meanings that are plausible from existing words and definitions.  Instead it kind of seems to just dump words together.<p>As a deep learning project I would say this shows very poor results.  It&#x27;s not even shallow learning.  I would be easy to trick by mentioning things like  &quot;a flying insect of the genus __something i don&#x27;t know__ native to __some place___&quot;.  I would also be extremely easy to trick via medical and other technical invented terms - as long as the invention isn&#x27;t something completely implausible like a disease caused by a feeling of blurred and deceptive movement of teeth.  Why can&#x27;t it say it&#x27;s caused by .... something that ever comes after the term &quot;caused by&quot;?<p>interesting project, but very poor showing IMHO.