Autotel

Absurd dictionary

Absurd dictionary development image

Short description

Absurd dictionary is a theoretical dictionary that could define the words so deeply, that suddenly language stops making sense.

The back idea is that our reality and meanings of the world are a tautological fallacy. It consists on a dictionary that displays the recursive nature of concepts: how our concepts are sustained in other concepts.

Imagine somebody that wouldn't know any word in our language nor any of our concepts, and starts learning them by using a dictionary, from scratch. When this person would seek a word and read it’s definition, would not understand it unless he read the definitions of the words that are used as definition.

In this dictionary, the words are not only defined, but also replaced by their definition while keeping grammatical consistency; forming a larger definition of the same initial word. This leads to a never ending game of diving into concepts, until the definition phrase lacks meaning. What starts being a short definition, ends up being an unutterable, long and recursive description.

2021 Update

absurd dictionary version 1.2

Since my website has been changed to a static server, and due to code obsolescence, the old version doesn't work. I have made a fast and dirty newer version, which is much simpler but still preserves the most basic functionality. Users are no longer able to write their own definitions (not that anyone tried anyways) directly, but if you really want to, you can send a pull request to the repository. The file with definitions is called dictionary.js.

Play with it here