Conference thebay::joyoflex

967.0. "how many words are there, really?" by STARCH::HAGERMAN (Flames to /dev/null) Thu May 21 1992 08:13

    I just found this conference a couple of days ago and it's great!
    (Thanks, Tom.)  Here's a question that has been bugging me
    for a long time but for which I never had an appropriate place
    to find the answer to:
    
    Suppose you look up a word in a dictionary.  It's defined using
    a few other words, possibly as synonyms or associated words.  If
    you look up those words, they're defined using some others.  At some
    point the definitions loop back around on themselves.  I guess
    this is something like so-called "hyper-text", where you can trace
    your way through a database of associated records.
    
    How many such loops are there?
    
    To answer this there have to be some additional rules (e.g.
    "conjunctions used in definitions are not part of the loop"), but
    assuming that some reasonable set of rules can be thought up, how
    would this work out?
    
    Doug.

>    How many such loops are there?
    
    42.
    
    Ray

     re .1>>  42.
    
    You are right!  42 is the answer to everything!
    
    Dave