[harperlee]

Surprised that no comment mentioned that there is a standard term (not a word :P) for the set of words that denominates a particular concept: nominal syntagm. Such as "boiling water" and also "that green parrot we saw yesterday over the left branch".

Also the slider examples are abysmal. "I love you", "Go home" and "How are you" are not words by any stretch of imagination. For someone who makes word games, I don't see a particularly deep love of words here.

Edit: Obligatory reference to Borges's Tlön: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertiu...

[michaeld123]

Added a note: "'I love you' isn't opaque, but it's tight enough to put on a tile." The familiar end of the spectrum picks up collocations that are transparent but loaded — I'm not claiming they're words in the traditional sense, but they're useful vocabulary for word games, which is where I'm coming from.

[vunderba]

> "'I love you' isn't opaque, but it's tight enough to put on a tile."

The problem with introducing phrase/sentences into a word game (let's take Scrabble) is that you'd spend half the night with your friends arguing over what is and is not acceptable with the only litmus test being its... corpus frequency?

[medalblue]

I thought that sentence seemed out of place when I read it. Didn't realize this was all AI slop. It all makes sense now.

[georgefrowny]

Funnily enough, "nominal syntagm" is, itself, not in the OED or Wiktionary. But Wiktionary has "syntagme nominal" as the French translation for "noun phrase".

You really have to love the human messiness of language!

[win311fwg]

A nominal syntagm is a somewhat overlapping concept, but deviates slightly from the direct discussion taking place. The more appropriate standard term here is: open compound word. Or, as one might say casually: word.