English for Wizards

More fun with rhymes

By John Moore

三省堂が提供している Web 辞書

One afternoon Peter asked, "Hey Dad, what rhymes with 'elephant'?" He was doing some kind of project and needed help, but I couldn't think of any word that rhymes with 'elephant.' Thank goodness we have the Internet!

There is a good online rhyming dictionary at the Lycos RhymeZone site (www.rhymezone.com). Type any word in the blank and click on the "Go get it!" button. You'll see lots of results that are interesting for English-learners. If you enter a word like "wizard," for example, you'll see "blizzard," "lizard" and "gizzard" along with some others.

You will probably find many words here you don't know, like "gizzard." What's that? Well, just click on the word and you will see its definition. A gizzard is ... some kind of thing birds have. Hmm. Even though Peter is half-American, he still often wants a Japanese translation. Again, the Internet helps us.

We can quickly go to Sanseido's Web Dictionary (www.sanseido.net). First click on "Daily Concise Ei-Wa Jiten" before entering the word. Now we know that gizzard means (鳥の)砂嚢(さのう). That was easy. (To tell you the truth, I still don't really understand, but that's OK.)

Peter's project was to write some short rhyming poems in English. Kids do this a lot. All you need is a lot of words that rhyme. Do you want to try? I made this stupid little poem:

There once was a wizard
Who swallowed his lizard
In the middle of a blizzard
It got stuck in his gizzard

Let's go back to RhymeZone. There's a lot more here than just rhymes. The pull-down list next to the blank offers synonyms, antonyms, related words, similar-sounding words etc. Great! It says a wizard is a "charming, genius, hotshot virtuoso." Wow!

Then farther down, you can choose "Other great features on RhymeZone," such as quizzes, games, Shakespeare, Mother Goose, quotations and more.

So what about "elephant"? Even though there are no perfect rhymes, you can still find near rhymes by clicking on "words ending with *ant," in the lower part of the results screen. Then you get literally hundreds of words, such as "brilliant," "distant" and "arrogant." If you want to, you can click on "arrogant" for its definition, or look it up in Sanseido's online dictionary.

Now, can you make a quick poem about a brilliant but arrogant elephant who was distant?

Shukan ST: April 4, 2003

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