Saturday, January 30, 2021

Disambiguation (disambiguation)

Getting to that page on the Wikipedia where you discover a word you like - a name you thought you knew - something you might have suspected was unique - was not - has other meanings.  Isn't a homonym but you might have thought so.  Disambiguation!  "The process of identifying which meaning of a word is used in context."

There's not a synonym for synonym*, palindrome isn't a palindrome**,  & onomatopoeia isn't a sound naming itself.  But disambiguation has a disambiguation page on Wikipedia.  Which somehow seems appropriate.

If there were a page for Self Help Radio on Wikipedia (which there isn't), it would probably be on the disambiguation page for "self-help radio" (also not a page).  & "self-help radio" might be on a separate page of different types of radio, maybe kinds of "talk radio" (which does have a page but doesn't mention self-help radio).

It's late.  You're just looking for information.  Maybe just curious.  Maybe you made a bet.  You discover there's some disambiguation.  So you look some more.

*Some smarty-pants think differently.
**The palindrome of Bolton, by the way, is not "Notlob."

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