Is GET /word.json/{word} not supported anymore?

[M Maple]

Hi.  I was hoping to use 

GET/word.json/{word}

as a way to verify that a word exists.  When I try to execute this routine through your test API, it always returns a blank response object.  Is this not supported anymore, or am I doing something wrong? I'd prefer not to use the other methods as they return much more information than I require...I simply want to confirm the word's existence.

Thank you!

[M Maple]

Oh, for completeness, here is the URL that the API test page generated (for the word 'blue'):

http://api.wordnik.com:80/v4/word.json/blue?useCanonical=false&includeSuggestions=false&api_key=a2a73e7b926c924fad7001ca3111acd55af2ffabf50eb4ae5

And here is the response:

{ "id": 0, "scrabble": false, "lookupCount": 0 }

[Erin McKean]

Thank you for your question! Unfortunately, this API endpoint has never really been extremely useful. We hope to be upgrading it soon, and would love feedback. 

It sounds as if you are looking for a measure of a word's "lexicality" -- how acceptable it is as a word. We don't (yet) have a single endpoint or call you can make to determine this, since people's use cases differ widely. 

You might want to look at the "totalCount" property of the frequency endpoint (https://api.wordnik.com/v4/word.json/$word/frequency?useCanonical=false&startYear=1800&endYear=2012&api_key=YOURAPIKEY) as a proxy value.

We are hoping to update the Wordnik API to include a "wordishness" or "lexicality" endpoint that would give a confidence score of wordishness (e.g. 'cat' = 100% confidence; 'megacattishnessosity' .... MUCH lower confidence :) ). If you'd like to be kept in the loop on new developments in the API, you can join our announcements list here: http://eepurl.com/bPCg0D

Thanks!

Erin

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Erin McKean

Wordnik

@emckean/@wordnik/@wordnikapi

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