Dictionary of Undefined Words

Question: how many words are used in dictionary definitions, but do not themselves have a definition?

This project is a long and arduous attempt to search for the answer. The goal was to examine the idea of language as a structural system, and to prove the dictionary an impossibly finite representation of the fluid and evolving “set” of language. Lastly, the result settles my curiosity about which words would turn up.

Some statistics about the process:

• Defined words from source text: 115,413
• Potential unknown words tested: approximately 2.6 million
• Distinct undefined words found: 17,086
• Size of database: 58.6mb
• Computer processing time: 122 hours (roughly 5 days)
• Hardware: 1.9ghz Pentium 4, 768mb RAM
• Software and languages used: MS Access 2003 for data storage, Perl for Regular Expressions and speed, Coldfusion MX for sketching.