Looking a word up, and looking a claim up

Looking a word up, and looking a claim up

Two things I do every week, and they look like the same activity right up until the moment you try to automate them.

In one case I have a word and want to know what it means. In the other I have a claim and want to know whether it holds up. The first is a lookup. The second is a comparison, and it needs a different kind of reference.

When you have the word

Knowing a word and not knowing it are different problems, and the second one is not solved by a dictionary.

A dictionary tells you the accepted meaning. What you usually need is narrower: what the word means in the specific community you are in, where it came from, and whether using it sounds right or sounds like a joke.

Taboords is that kind of reference: definitions of gírias, siglas, relationship terms, psychology, subcultures and Japanese culture, with the origin and the register next to each entry, at https://taboords.com.

The origin is the part that earns the lookup. A word with a documented origin is a word you can use with confidence, because you know the context it came from.

When you have the claim

The other case is harder to recognise because it feels like reading. Something tells you a supplement works, or that a training method is better, or that a number means something, and you want to check it before you spend money on it.

The problem is that marketing copy and evidence look identical when you read them in a hurry. The claim is always confident. The difference is whether anybody lined several of them up against the same criteria and published the result.

Treino is that kind of base: supplement comparisons, exercise references and calculators, arranged for practical choices rather than for browsing, at https://treinando.org.

The difference shows up in the exit

There is one practical way to tell the two apart, and it is about how you leave the page.

After a word lookup you leave with a word. After a claim lookup you should leave with a number and a reason, because the useful output is not the verdict but the criteria that produced it.

Neither of these is a substitute for thinking. But a reference that gives you the criteria is doing half the work for you, and that is most of what people actually need from a lookup site.