How to Use
Input a Japanese word (or phrase), and this tool will return its synonyms for each sense/definition of the word (with a bit of overlap across some senses due to the differences in the wordings). It’s recommended to input a word in kanji (for the purpose of disambiguation). The synonyms are sorted based on the (semantic) similarity to the input word. The result may also include some blog posts of mine that are relevant to the input word (if there are any).
* I’m planning to refine this tool further (e.g. suggest synonyms for words given context). If you find some critical errors that need fixing ASAP, or if you have any suggestions/ideas to improve this tool, let me know via social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) or the contact page.
Details of the Options
- Show furigana: untick this box if you don’t need furigana for each synonym
- Similarity Filtering: Select “Strong” if you want to discard words that are not very (semantically) similar to the input word, and “Disable” if you want to see all the relevant words. The default option “Mild” goes in the middle.
- Frequency Filtering: Select “Strong” if you want to discard rare/uncommon words (recommended if you’re not interested in advanced words), and “Disable” if you want to see all words (some of which may be useless unless you want to be a wordsmith in Japanese). The default option “Mild” goes in the middle.
Both filtering options determine how many synonyms are shown in the result. If the result is sparse, try disabling either (or both) of them.
Acknowledgement
This tool employs two open-source Japanese lexicon databases, namely Japanese Wordnet (dubbed “Dictionary 1”) and JMDict (dubbed “Dictionary 2”). These resources are accessible through the links below.
- Japanese Wordnet (vXX) © 2009-2011 NICT, 2012-2015 Francis Bond and 2016-2017 Francis Bond, Takayuki Kuribayashi (linked to http://compling.hss.ntu.edu.sg/wnja/index.en.html)
- http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/JMdict-EDICT_Dictionary_Project
Other Tools
This tool automatically assigns furigana to each kanji word in an input sentence, and also shows their definitions retrieved from JMDict.
This (bit of a gag) tool automatically converts Japanese words into gairaigo (外来語, “loanwords”) written in katakana, and vice versa (e.g. 気さくな歌手 ↔ フレンドリーなシンガー, ハイパフォーマンス ↔ 高性能).
Relevant Blog Posts
If you’re the kind of a person who loves exploring synonyms (like me), the following posts may pique your interest:
- 40 Ways of Saying “Many/Much” in Japanese (Ooi, Ippai, Takusan, …)
- 30+ Japanese Words for “Very”: Synonyms of とても (totemo)
- Boku, Ore, Watashi, Atashi: 15 Japanese Person Pronouns
- 20 Japanese Words For Various Types of Rain
- 7 Ways of Saying/Writing よろしく (yoroshiku) in Japanese
- 50 Japanese Words and Idioms about Love & Relationship
- 5 Meanings of 気 (ki) and 30 気-related Phrases/Idioms
- List of 50+ Japanese Words to Describe Personality
- 30+ Essential Japanese Words to Describe Food
- Japanese Money-Related Idioms and Slang Words
- 40 Funny Japanese Old Slang Words to Sound like Oyaji (Old Men)
- Ashita, Asatte, Shiasatte, Yanoasatte: 13 Japanese Words Describing Dates
- 8 Funny and Cute Japanese Cat Idioms
And see more posts that introduce various words based on a particular topic here
